


In the House of Love

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [1]
Category: Wiseguy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:54:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Vinnie has been rescued from La Mano Blanco, but he hasn't recovered.Rudy has an idea what he needs.  But things don't work out exactly as planned.





	In the House of Love

_(A Traitor's Heart)_

 

**_I Know Your Deepest Secret Fear_ **

On Thursday when she came in to work, Tracy Steelgrave found a note her secretary had made, that she had a nine o'clock appointment Friday morning with Rafael Aiuppo. She read it twice, her heart pounding, then she buzzed Lucille.

"When did Mr. Aiuppo call for this appointment?"

"Yesterday afternoon," Lucille answered.

 _Did he ask for me—specifically? What did he want? What did he sound like?_ She wanted to ask, but it would have sounded so odd. "Thanks."

The day was busy, something Tracy was grateful for later; it gave her very little time to worry. But as she left the courtroom that evening, that nagging question _What does he want with me?_ returned, in all its permutations. He couldn't be coming all this way just for a tax problem.

She had intended to go home and call Uncle Sonny, but every moment her paranoia quotient ratcheted up a notch, until visions of wiretaps and police set-ups had her pulling her car over at the next pay phone she saw. "Daddy, you didn't teach me enough for this life," she muttered, fumbling around for change.

Four rings, then the anonymous answering machine voice answered. "Uncle Sonny, it's me, it's Tracy, where are you?" She looked at her watch. "I'm not home yet, I'll be there—call me back, we need to talk." She hung up.

The first thing in the front door, Tracy punched the button on her answering machine, listened to her mother reminding her about dinner tomorrow night, to Bill calling to tell her when he'd be back in town, asking her to pick him up at the airport. Nothing from Uncle Sonny. No surprise that she slept badly that night.

 

Rudy Aiuppo was right on time. That was no surprise; even as sheltered from the business as she had been, Tracy had heard about him. She stood up when he came in and offered him her hand.

"Mr. Aiuppo."

He took her hand, a caress more than a shake, reminding her that she was a woman, that he did business with her only _in extremis._ "Thank you for seeing me." He waited until she was sitting before seating himself.

"I have to admit, I'm curious why you came all this way to see me."

"I didn't mean to seem mysterious. But this isn't something to discuss on the telephone where you never know who might be listening."

"That's very true," she agreed automatically, wondering what she was agreeing about. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I have a problem, one that you might be able to help me solve. It involves my son and a former friend of his."

"All right. I'll certainly be happy to help you if I can."

"My son recently returned from a trip abroad. While he was there he contracted an illness, and when he came back to us, he was very ill. Some kind of tropical fever, I don't remember the name, but he was delirious for several days."

"I'm very sorry to hear that." Her sympathy was genuine, but she felt rather lost. What did this have to do with her? "I hope he's doing better."

"He's much improved now and should be back to his old self before long. Physically, that is. He's still rather disoriented. When he was delirious—and even now, he frequently talks about or to this old friend of his. It seems they were very close, but parted under bad terms. The doctors have done all they can to help, but they've suggested that if this friend could be found, then perhaps he could reach my son. Help him to resolve whatever's troubling him."

"That sounds like a very good idea." Tracy was beginning to wonder if perhaps what he needed wasn't a lawyer but a private detective.

"I love Vincenzo as if he was my own flesh and blood, and I would do anything to help him. I'll be blunt. This friend of his is your uncle." 

"My uncle?" Her hands clenched involuntarily; she forced them to relax, hoping the sudden spike of fear didn't show on her face.

"Your uncle Salvatore," Rudy agreed gently. "Vincenzo worked for him for almost a year, and from what I've pieced together, they became very close."

"Your son is Vinnie Terranova?" It had been years since she'd thought of Vinnie.

"Yes, I married his mother three years ago."

 _Stepfather. I see._ "I am so sorry." The same words she'd said before, but these came from her heart rather than her good manners. "I liked Vinnie very much, from the short time I knew him. What can I do to help him?"

"Quite a lot, I hope. Although I've been retired for some time, a man in my position hears things. Those things may not have a particular use at the time, but still, you file them away just in case. Some time ago, I heard something and I'm using it now. You don't have to say anything, Miss Steelgrave, but I know your uncle is alive. How he managed that, or what he's doing now, is of no consequence to me. But for Vincenzo's sake, I must talk to him as soon as possible."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Aiuppo, but your sources are—mistaken." It was a struggle to sound like a self-assured grown-up rather than the scared little girl she felt like.

He smiled at her indulgently. "I'm staying at the Bonaventure Hotel. I'll meet your uncle wherever he chooses, but I must see him."

"I'll be happy to help Vinnie in any way I can. But I can't raise the dead."

"My flight leaves Wednesday at ten a.m. Tell your uncle to call me before then, and we can make arrangements to meet." He paused. "Tell him Vincenzo has been talking about the things they did together."

"The things they did together? What things?"

He gave her another smile, one she didn't quite trust. "Old times. I'm sure he'll understand. Now, I mustn't keep you any longer. Thank you for your time. You would make your grandfather proud."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Aiuppo. It was a pleasure meeting you. Please, give Vinnie my regards."

They said their goodbyes, and Tracy went to the window, waited, waited, until the old man came out and got into a cab. Then she went to her desk and phoned her uncle. Still no answer.

 _He knows. He's not bluffing, he knows. "You would make your grandfather proud."_ Tracy smiled in spite of herself. "Guess I bluff pretty good, though." She had to admit, it had been exciting, more exciting than her first day in court. Maybe she couldn't hold her own against Rafael Aiuppo, but she hadn't folded or tipped her hand. That was something to be proud of.

 

For some reason, Tracy kept thinking about her father. Well, maybe that was natural, considering everything, but the two memories that kept resurfacing were from the Christmas she was seven. She'd gotten her first bicycle, and her father had taught her how to ride it. She remembered the shakiness of it, like trying to ride a colt that was just learning to walk, and then the moment she realized she could fly, the icy air tearing at her cheeks, her fingers, her bare legs under that year's Christmas dress as she flew, flew, flew away—

And behind her, her father and uncle yelling at her to pedal faster, cheering her on.

And somehow that segued into her father yelling at her mother, angry out of all proportion that her mother had bought the wrong kind of tangerines instead of the Satsumas—small, sweet, and most importantly, seedless—he had preferred. Tracy didn't know what kind her mother had bought—after all, she'd only been seven when this argument had taken place—Clementines probably, but whatever they'd been, they hadn't been right. Her mother had first apologized, then placated, then, finally tried to ignore her father's anger, but he wouldn't let it go, until at last her mother had thrown the bowl of tangerines on the floor, breaking the crystal fruit bowl that had been a present from her mother-in-law.

What did it mean? Nothing, and who cared? It was just better to think about than talking to Uncle Sonny about Rudy Aiuppo wanting to see him.

She dialed his number. The machine picked up, and after asking her to leave a message, beeped and beeped and beeped. He hadn't picked up her last message yet, and his machine was probably full. Tracy hung up.

She put on her party face and went to pick up Bill at the airport, but the effort of making cheerful, idle conversation was too much, and she begged off dinner or spending the night, ignoring his disappointed face.

She drove past Sonny's apartment, but the window was dark. No messages on her machine when she got home and Sonny still hadn't picked up his. And that set the tone for the weekend.

Tracy sat in her apartment in the dark, thinking about her family—which meant her father's family; her mother's family had been nearby, but they might as well have been on the moon for all she knew them.

Her grandfather had died before she was born; her uncle Dom and his family had disappeared when she was still very young. In Tracy's mind, her family had been her parents, her grandmother, and her Uncle Sonny. Her grandmother's death she had been able to understand, to accept; even a little girl knows that old people die.

Her father—well, a part of her had been expecting that phone call since she'd first begun to understand what her father did for a living. But that hadn't helped prepare her for it, hadn't eased the pain of his death.

Having her mother with her helped. So did having a place of her own. She really loved Malibu, her mother seemed—not happy, but at ease there, and they had already decided to stay there after she'd passed the bar.

And then, before she could really adjust to having lost her father, the call had come—Vinnie, sounding like he'd been drinking, telling her that her uncle was dead, too. His explanation had been garbled and he'd started to cry, finally just hanging up. She'd been up all night on the telephone, making calls that were never answered. A police officer had called the next day, but he hadn't told her much more than Vinnie had. She'd only gotten the full story—that her uncle had committed suicide—when she'd threatened to take the police department to court.

Tracy had seen Vinnie at the funeral, but she hadn't spoken to him; she'd been—well, a little afraid to. Vinnie looked as though he hadn't slept since he'd made that call. And honestly, she didn't care about talking to him; her uncle was dead. Her family was gone.

Well. She was strong. Hadn't her father taught her not to give up, not to let anyone get the better of her? She'd applied herself to her studies and her mother.

A year later, when an envelope showed up addressed in Uncle Sonny's handwriting, Tracy had assumed it must have been held up in the mail. She hadn't believed it could be anything else.

He had never explained anything to her, and when she'd pressed him, he'd teased her but told her nothing. The authorities thought he was dead, and Tracy was afraid to go asking questions and stirring things up. She didn't care, anyway; having him around eased her loneliness so.

She hadn't told her mother. As far as she knew, she was the only one in the world who knew Sonny Steelgrave was alive. He had been her secret for two years now, and she had been very, very careful.

_How **had** Rudy Aiuppo found out?_

_Uncle Sonny is going to be furious._

 

Saturday night she spent with Bill, sneaking phone calls every chance she got, faking attentiveness, laughter, interest, and finally an orgasm.

 

Sunday was easier, being inattentive to her mother and letting her think it was because she was thinking of Bill.

The worst part of it all was that she really didn't want to talk to Sonny, didn't want to tell him Rudy Aiuppo knew he was alive and wanted something from him. And the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. If Vinnie was this sick, he should be under a doctor's care, shouldn't he? What could Sonny do for him? They had been friends, she knew; at least, Sonny had mentioned him a good deal the few times they'd spoken on the phone that year after her father's death. How close had they been, anyway?

There were pieces missing from this puzzle, and while she knew Sonny had them, Tracy really didn't want to ask him. She loved him, but his temper scared her. And why shouldn't it? Even her father had been intimidated by it.

Driving home from her mother's, Tracy once again detoured past her uncle's apartment. This time, the lights were on.

She parked the car and got out. Better to do this in person. Braver.

He opened the door in answer to her knock, looking tired, but also restless, edgy. It was a mood she hated, one that made him hard to talk to, his attention somewhere else.

"Tracy, what're you doing here?" He glanced at his watch, laughed. "I thought it was later. I've been driving all day, just got home. What's the matter?"

"Uncle Sonny, we've got a big problem." She'd planned to be calmer, not sound like a scared little girl, but standing there in the doorway, she felt like one.

Again he gave a slight laugh, and put his arm around her shoulders, escorting her into the room. "Come on in, we'll get you fixed up. You want a drink?"

"Sure," Tracy agreed, not really wanting it. Sonny always offered her a drink, and always made them strong, as if reminding himself his little niece was a grown-up. She sat down on the sofa, dropped her purse on the floor.

He handed her a glass, sat next to her on the sofa with his own. "C'm'on, kid, spill it. It can't be that bad."

"Uncle Sonny—a man came to my office Friday morning. He wanted to see you."

Sonny lowered his glass without taking a sip, looking at her. _Well, I've got his full attention now, anyway._

"To see me? What man?"

She took a swallow of the whiskey and dropped the bombshell. "Rudy Aiuppo."

But the bomb didn't go off.

Instead, Sonny just looked flummoxed. Tracy sat gripping her glass, waiting. He seemed on the verge of saying something, asking her something, but no words came out. Watching his helpless confusion was horrible, far worse than the eruption she had been expecting. Her Uncle Sonny always knew what he was doing, her father had told her that more than once, and it always worked to calm her fears. She gulped down the rest of her drink.

Then he was up and pacing, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to organize his thoughts. That was better; she knew him best, he was most himself, in motion.

"What did he want?" he asked, suddenly stopping in front of her. And before she had a chance to answer, "What makes him think I cab even talk to him?"

Tracy shrugged helplessly. "He said he had his sources. I denied everything, but he just rolled over me like I was a little girl playing make-believe—very polite, but nothing I said—" She shrugged again. "I heard Dad talking about him once, saying that he wasn't someone to cross."

Sonny gave her a sharp look. "No, he's not. I hope you were careful."

"I was perfectly polite, I just kept telling him I didn't know what he was talking about."

He was back to pacing again, hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets, jingling keys and change. "Why did he want to see me? Did he say?"

"It's about Vinnie Terranova. He said Vinnie's been very sick . . . ." Tracy's words trailed off in confusion. Sonny had his back to her, and the instant she said Vinnie's name, he stopped, his whole body going taut.

He didn't move, didn't say a word, and as the silence stretched out, Tracy sat frozen with fear. _What the hell is going on?_

Finally Sonny turned back to face her. His face was white, his expression one of forced calm, all but his eyes. His eyes looked too bright, feverish and unfocused. "What does Rudy Aiuppo have to do with Terranova?" She had never seen her uncle like this—not just confused, but positively lost.

"He's Vinnie's stepfather now. Three years ago he married Vinnie's mother."

Tracy didn't know what kind of reaction she had been expecting to this, but it certainly wasn't Sonny laughing so hard he had to sit down.

But his laughter, whether hysterical or not, was infectious. Trying not to laugh herself, she asked, "What's so funny?"

"Goody-fucking-Two-Shoes gets stuck with—" He stopped abruptly, still laughing.

"What?" Tracy persisted.

He caught his breath, started again. "This is a woman who disowns her son for bootlegging cigarettes—and she marries Rudy Aiuppo? Who says God doesn't have a sense humor?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Vinnie's mom. She disowned him for bootlegging cigarettes, then she turns around and marries—" He was holding his stomach, laughing too hard to speak. Tracy didn't know what to say—none of it made any sense to her—but seeing Sonny so gleeful relieved some of her anxiety.

"So," he said finally, wiping his eyes, "what's this cosmic joke got to do with me?"

"Well," Tracy said carefully, not wanting to step on Sonny's good mood, "apparently Vinnie was very sick. He had some sort of prolonged fever and was delirious for a while. He started talking to you then, and I guess even now that he's home, he's still . . . talking to you . . . ." Sonny's suddenly intense scrutiny had Tracy fumbling for words.

"Talking about me?" Sonny interrupted. "Saying what?"

"Mr. Aiuppo didn't really say, just that I should tell you Vinnie's been talking about things you did together. Old times, he said. He also said Vinnie's very disoriented, that he's been talking to you."

The hilarity was gone. "Yeah? So? What's he want from me?"

Tracy answered carefully. She didn't understand the danger, but she knew she was standing in a minefield. "He says the doctors can't do anything more for Vinnie, but they seem to think that you could snap Vinnie out of this. Do you know what he's talking about?"

"No."

 _He's lying._ Tracy was quiet for several minutes, thinking. "I didn't have a chance to get to know Vinnie very well—"

"Just as well." His brusque tone told her he didn't want to talk about Vinnie. _But why?_

"I know Dad didn't like him, but I thought you did." If she had to, she would beg him to tell her what was going on. But only if she had to.

"Yeah, you're right, I did like him."

"Mr. Aiuppo says he talks a lot about stuff you used to do together."

"What kind of stuff?"

Sonny's quick, suspicious question made her answer slowly. "Well, he didn't mention anything in particular. But he was insistent, he has to talk to you, so he must be convinced you can help Vinnie."

"How'd he seem to you?" Sonny asked.

"Polite, almost formal. He wasn't threatening, but he scares me. It's like he knows all about us."

"I'm sure he does." Off-hand, like it was obvious. And when Tracy thought about it, it was; a man like Rudy Aiuppo wouldn't show up unprepared.

Sonny was back on his feet, pacing, not quite listening to her.

"I said you were dead, but he never wavered. He told me what hotel he's staying at, that he would meet you wherever you wanted, but that he's leaving Wednesday. It was like a command performance and you're the one who's ordered to show up."

"Yeah, that's it exactly. When you got the kind'a power he does, you don't have to threaten. You just snap your fingers and everybody jumps."

Tracy watched him pace, waited patiently until at last he sat back down next to her, smiling. "So. Any advice?"

She shook her head. "I don't know enough yet. How does he know about you? About me? You know I've never had anything to do with your business. You and Mom and Daddy would've killed me if I even asked."

"I got no idea how he knows about me. Somebody must'a spotted me, tipped him off. You, you're right out here in the open, how hard would it be to find you?"

 _Right. Of course._ "What would happen if you don't go?"

Sonny gave her a tight smile. "Well, Rudy Aiuppo's not the kind of guy to back off. My bet is, if I don't contact him, you'll be hearing from him again." Her face must have shown something of her dread because he pulled her into a sudden embrace. "Don't worry, you won't be seeing him again."

For a moment she basked in his warm affection, pushing aside her fear.

"All right, tell me what you know about him. Can he be taken at his word or would he sell you out later?"

Sonny let her go, shrugged. "If anybody can be, Rudy Aiuppo can. And I can't imagine what anybody could offer him that would make him turn rat. He's been deported once already; he's got more money than God, he's got lawyers working night and day to keep him in the country, he—" Sonny gave her a sharp look.

"He what?"

"Nothing. Just a thought." Still, he seemed preoccupied by it. "If it was anybody but Terranova. Dammit."

"Uncle Sonny." He was up again, staring out the window, not even hearing her. "Can you trust him?"

"He always looks like you can," Sonny answered distantly.

Tracy frowned, not sure if he was answering her or some question he'd asked himself. "I'm asking if you went, would you be able to leave afterwards?"

That seemed to get through. He turned around to face her. "What?"

"I know he said he's known about you for a long time and didn't care, but who's to say he's telling the truth, or if he is, that he hasn't changed his mind?" Sonny seemed to have no idea what she was talking about. "He said you and Vinnie parted on bad terms?" _Tell me something that will help me help you!_

He snorted out a humorless laugh. "Bad terms. Yeah, you could say that." He was drifting away from her again. Tracy had never seen him like this, so vague and preoccupied. She went over to stand in front of him, directly in his line of sight.

"How bad? Bad enough that he might want to kill you for it?"

Finally his gaze focused on her, his eyes met hers, and what she saw confused her: chagrin and vulnerability beneath a sardonic smile. "Trace. He's a fed."

 _That's one hell of a cover,_ was her first wild thought, until she realized it was Vinnie he meant, not Aiuppo. "So that's why everything came crashing down all at once." Her second thought, small, silly, selfish, _You mean, he never really liked me?_ And then she understood so much. _I only knew him a few days, he was with you for months, right after Daddy—_ She wanted to put her arms around him, comfort him, but she knew he'd brush her off, that he didn't want her to see this pain, didn't realize she could. _And what he needs from me right now is a level head, not a shoulder to cry on._ "When did you find out?"

"Not 'til the very end."

Tracy moved away from him, picked up her glass, poured more whiskey over the melting ice. "Did he have anything to do with my father's death?"

"No, huh-uh. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and I really don't think so. The timing was all wrong; there's no way Vinnie could have set up that deal with Sykes; he really was inside when it all started. I think Tony was behind that whole deal."

"Tony?" No one had ever told her this. "Tony and my father were friends. When I was little he was over at our house almost as much as you."

"Yeah, Dave and Tony were tight. But Tony got greedy, then he got scared."

"Tony always creeped me out," she confessed. "Every time I came by your office, he'd ask me out."

"You're kidding!" He stared at her, angry and protective even after all these years. "Why the hell didn't you tell anybody? Your father would have shipped him off to Siberia."

"I always came up with a way to put him off." She shrugged. "I didn't want to cause trouble."

"Well, he's a memory now," Sonny told her, his suggestive tone leaving nothing to her imagination.

 _I should be appalled,_ she thought, but the truth was, she was glad. _I hope you're burning in hell, you bastard._ "I don't know how to add this up," she said finally. "Vinnie being a fed—does it make this deal better or worse? You say Mr. Aiuppo wouldn't rat you out. But Vinnie is a fed. If Mr. Aiuppo isn't setting you up for the cops—but if Vinnie is involved, it can't be a hit—"

"Why not?" Sonny asked. He came to stand beside her, refilled his glass.

She gave him an exasperated look and he laughed.

"What, you think cops don't do things like that 'cause they're the good guys?" he teased her gently. "They do, but I don't think that's what's going on here."

He sounded more confident, more cheerful. He put his arm around her shoulders, led her back to the sofa, where they sat down. "First off, Aiuppo knows he's a fed. I'm sure of that."

"How?" she asked immediately, and Sonny grinned at her.

"You knew Aiuppo got deported?"

"I didn't. What about it? And what's he doing back in the country?"

"Probably hated it over there. I don't know how he got back. But I do know he's smart enough to've stayed under the feds' radar once he was back. So what's he doing getting caught by Peter Allatore, who was so busy running for governor, he wouldn't've noticed if Al Capone bit him in the ass?"

Tracy knew he was expecting her to connect the dots, but the gaps between them seemed too wide, she couldn't see where he was leading. "How do you know all this? And what's it got to do with Vinnie?"

"I read the papers, Princess, I keep track of what's going on out there. This all started around the same time the whole New York Commission—Albert Cerrico, Alex Vechoff, all of 'em—went down. Aiuppo got shot, got caught—not by the feds, but by Allatore, and the Commission goes down." He gulped his drink. "I was wrong. For Vinnie, he'd hand me to the feds in thirty seconds, gift-wrapped."

Sonny's excitement was contagious; Tracy had a hard time sitting quietly beside him, though she still hadn't figured out what he was talking about. "What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"OK, follow this. Aiuppo gets extradited and sneaks back into the country. His return shakes the Commission—why's he back, what's he want, is he expecting to sit at the head of the table again? The answers are, it's not really the Island of the Sun, the man just likes running water and air conditioning, besides, his wife's kid is here. What he wants is to be left the hell alone, and no, he's not interested in their table, hasn't been for some time."

"But they can't afford to take that on faith."

"No, of course not. He's been pretty much out of it for a long time, maybe they could just keep an eye on him, offer him a little more incentive to stay away. But now there's Vinnie, up'n coming, and now he's Aiuppo's son."

"You mean you think Rudy Aiuppo backed Vinnie to get him into the Commission so that he could set them up?" Somehow she was scandalized by this idea.

"Sweetheart, he wasn't doing it to further Terranova's career. Somebody shot him in front of his own house. His family was at risk. And providence sent him the perfect way to take them all out, to get himself clear, to keep his family safe."

There might be flaws in his reasoning, but Tracy didn't know the mindset well enough; that was Sonny's area of expertise, and she'd bow to his experience. "But how does that tie in with Allatore and the extradition?"

"A new player joins the game, it doesn't go unnoticed. It especially doesn't go unnoticed by a prosecutor running for governor on a law and order ticket."

"How do you know he was running on a law and order ticket?"

"He was a prosecutor; when they run, it's always on a law and order ticket—what else'a they got?"

She answered that with a wry smile. "But how does that—"

"What do you want to bet Vinnie was about to make the news, big-time, only Aiuppo gave 'em a better story."

"But why would he—"

"But Terranova," Sonny went on, half under his breath. "That's what makes this so dangerous."

She was lost again. "What are you talking about? Are you afraid of Vinnie?"

Sonny shook his head. "I'm not worried about Vinnie. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be worried about Aiuppo. He's a man of his word, if he says he's no danger to me, I'd believe that."

"But?"

"These aren't normal circumstance. Terranova's involved, and it's amazing, the stupid things people will do for him. If I'm right, Aiuppo handed the Commission to the feds and himself to the prosecutor for him."

 _And you threw yourself into a fusebox, tried to kill yourself._ She didn't say it; she wouldn't dare, but she knew it was true.

"I think this's on the level," Sonny announced abruptly.

"Why?" Tracy asked immediately.

"Because he went through you."

Tracy shook her head. "What does that signify?"

"He knows we're in contact. If he wanted me dead, why involve you, why not just have you tailed 'til you led him to me? Same thing with a bust—if all he wanted was my whereabouts, all he needed was to watch you. He needs more than that, he needs my good will, so he came through the front door with his hat in his hand and he asked to see me. He knows I'm not a danger to Vinnie; if I was interested in getting revenge, I've had plenty of time. So if this is a trap, what's the point? I'm not a risk to Vinnie, so why should Aiuppo take the risk of getting rid of me? And why tip his hand and give me a chance to disappear? Because he needs my cooperation."

It seemed reasonable, but seemed wasn't enough for Tracy. Sonny was the closest thing she had to a father and she wasn't willing to let him do this without a whole lot more assurance that she'd be getting him back. _Let him do it?_ a surprised voice in her mind asked, and she answered it firmly. _Yes, let him do it. I won't, not if it means losing him. Well, this should be interesting,_ the voice answered with sarcastic glee, then subsided to watch. Tracy took a deep breath. "Uncle Sonny. Why aren't you a risk to Vinnie?"

The question first surprised, then amused him. "You think I ought'a kill him?" His voice was serious, even if his eyes weren't. "That your advice as my attorney?"

She rolled her eyes, exasperated by the teasing. "I'm not saying that. I'm asking why you didn't."

Sonny stood up, walked away from her. "What's the point? One way or the other, it's all gone."

Tracy burst out laughing, trying to contain it when Sonny turned to glare at her. "I'm sorry, but you're the last person I ever expected to hear advocating turning the other cheek. Now, why don't you tell me the truth?" She was sure he was going to go off on her, his face was so stormy, but instead he just looked away, shaking his head. Tracy was relieved, then annoyed. "You can't just blow me off! You asked for my advice, now stop treating me like a child and be straight with me—"

"I got my reasons!" Sonny shouted at her. "You don't need to know everything!"

Her patience disappeared. "Yes, I do!" she shouted back. "How else can I give you any kind of useful advice—" She went over, took him by the shoulders and shook him. "You aren't going to do this until I've determined it's safe!"

Sonny's face showed anger, outrage—and amusement and affection. He gently detached himself from her hold. "I'm not, huh?"

"No. You're not. If comes down to it, you can disappear again and I'll stonewall Mr. Aiuppo."

Sonny had stopped smiling. "Not scared?"

"Of course I'm scared, but that doesn't mean I can't handle it."

 _Your father's daughter._ He didn't say the words; he didn't have to.

"But I need to know what I'm handling. You aren't considering this because it's Mr. Aiuppo. It's because of Vinnie. Why is he so important to you?"

Sonny shut down right in front her, just disappeared, leaving her with an unapproachable stranger. "Not something you need to know." The curt voice spoke to her as a stranger.

Tracy refused to back off. "Dammit, there isn't anything I don't need to know! I can't make a judgement, I can't advise you on only partial evidence! Now stop treating me like a child and tell me—"

"I don't have to tell you anything!" For one sharp moment they were adversaries, almost enemies, then he was pacing again, moving around the room with a restless intensity that put Tracy in mind of a lion in the zoo: a predator, impatient for a killing.

Sonny glanced back at her, but she didn't give an inch, just stared at him impassively, though her heart was pounding so hard, the pulses in her temples throbbed. "You just have to trust me," he nearly apologized.

Tracy waited a few minutes before answering, hoping he'd relent. "How can I, when you don't trust me?" She heard him swear, low and vicious, under his breath, and somehow she understood that whatever it was he couldn't say, it embarrassed him. She moved to stand in his path, grabbed his arm when he tried to detour around her. And there it was: naked on his face, an annihilating shame even the most cold-blooded, level-headed of men would take to the grave. _And Uncle Sonny, you are neither._ "Whatever it is, you can tell me," she tried to tell him, but he wouldn't hear her.

"I don't have to tell you a goddamn thing," he snapped at her, jerking his arm away. He went back to the window, leaned against the frame, staring out.

Tracy watched him for a moment, then she went to the kitchen and got a glass from the cabinet, filling it with ice and water. It wasn't going to get her anywhere to keep battering him, trying to force information out of him.

She'd heard tell of clients who'd let themselves go to prison, or even to death, rather than reveal some dark past. Tracy had never had a client behave that way, but then her specialty was tax law. She pressed the glass against her forehead to cool her face before drinking the water in long gulps. _He did the worst thing imaginable, he let an undercover cop into the organization._ She had grown up with that mindset; it hadn't been taught to her overtly, but she'd breathed it in every day of her life. Now it made more sense that he'd tried to kill himself; once it had gotten out what he'd done— She shivered just thinking of what they'd have done to him for it. _He's no different. No,_ she thought fiercely, _and neither was my father, and I don't care._ Right or wrong, he was her family, and that was all she cared about. _But he told me that. What in the world could he possibly think is worse?_ She looked up to find him standing in the doorway, staring at her as if he were reading her mind.

He walked past her to the refrigerator, opened it, took out a pitcher of orange juice, and held it up in silent invitation. _"It's amazing, the stupid things people will do for him." This is about Vinnie._ The pieces fell together. She shook her head and he poured himself a glass, replaced the pitcher, left the room. Tracy watched him go, feeling incredulous, but sure she was right. _He'd never tell me that, no matter what. Does it make a difference?_ She tried to think how it could, but came up empty, sure of only one thing: he was going to go no matter what she said. _So all I can do is try to make sure he's safe._ She replaced the melted ice, refilled her glass, walked back to the living room, and sat down. Sonny was back to standing by the window.

"OK," she said briskly, "let's assume Mr. Aiuppo's being straight with us and he means you no harm. Are prepared to risk going back to New York? If someone recognized you out here, you know the odds are even higher of you being spotted there. Is Vinnie worth it?"

"Yeah. I gotta know."

"Know what?" She picked up her purse from the floor, found the tin of aspirin she carried, and fished out two.

"What he's been saying."

"I see." She said the words as neutrally as possible.

"Oh, yeah?" He turned to look at her with dark amusement. "What do you see?"

"You're just going to see what people are saying about you."

"What Vinnie's saying about me, about us."

"Not because you're concerned about him." He didn't answer. Tracy pushed a little harder. "Not because you might want to see him."

"Yeah, I'm concerned about him," Sonny conceded. "I don't want to see him, but I don't have a choice."

"Of course you have a choice. You could talk to Mr. Aiuppo, tell him you're sorry, but it's too dangerous."

"How will that tell me anything?" Sonny demanded.

"Well, I'm sure Mr. Aiuppo could tell you what Vinnie's saying." When Sonny didn't respond, she added, "I don't really understand that, though. You were there. Surely you must know."

"Know what?"

"What Vinnie could be saying. He worked for you—" She stumbled. _Well, no, he didn't, but—_ "—he was your friend," she finished lamely.

"Was he? Do you know that?" The question was frighteningly intense. "Because I sure as hell don't. I wanna know what all this is about. A guilty conscience or—"

"Or what?" she asked when Sonny didn't continue.

"Nothing."

 _Oh._ "You really need to see him, don't you?" her tone was filled with understanding.

"I gotta know," Sonny insisted as if she had put up an argument.

Tracy had the unsettling conviction that if she stayed, Sonny would—not tell her, but give himself away, and that the only way to forestall this was to leave now. She drained her glass, set it on the coffee table, stood up. "You'll be careful?"

He turned away from the window. "Yeah, of course."

She walked over to hug him goodbye.

He hugged her back, hard and long, the way he used to when she was a little girl. "Don't worry," he said into her ear. "I'm not going to be taken in twice."

"Call me before you leave."

He assured her that he would, kissed her on the cheek. She left him standing at the window. _I wouldn't mind if you told me—whatever you have to tell. But it would never be the same, once you knew I knew._ When she got down to the car, she looked up and saw him, still standing there.

~~~

**_I Know the Word You Long to Hear_ **

Rudy sat at the deliberately chosen, out of the way table, sipping his cup of tea, wearing his carefully cultivated harmless old man demeanor. Some of it was perfectly genuine—he was truly an old man. The harmless part . . . . Well, he held no malice in his heart for anyone. He had no need to summon up anger or menace; in this situation his presence and his reputation would be threat enough. He only hoped they would not be so much threat as to be counterproductive.

He did not watch the doorway, nor did he make eye contact with anyone, though he was quite aware of everything that was going on around him. He was thinking about the last few years, starting with the first time he met Vincenzo.

He had taken him at face value, had never even considered he was not what he seemed. It was embarrassing, but it was true. He had never been one of those fools who relied on instinct to spot an impostor; anyone coming into his organization was checked out thoroughly. He'd weeded out numerous cops, several reporters, and one kid who blamed Rudy for his father's death and wanted revenge. He'd been careful—to the point of paranoia, possibly, but he'd never been caught. _Not until Vincenzo._ No, not until then. He had been blinded by love for his Carlotta, had wanted to reach out to her by helping her son. _You were a fool._ And a lucky fool at that; lucky that the drug deal with Mel Profitt had fallen through, lucky that those imbeciles, those animals Castallano and Brod, had not hurt his Carlotta. He had always been lucky, always paid for that luck with care, attention to detail. This was luck he hadn't deserved, and he thanked God for it. Love could blind a man, any man, if he was foolish enough to open himself up to it. What could be more foolish than courting such blindness? The true, paradoxical answer: avoiding it. For with that blindness came a joy unlike any other. It was a gift from God, that illogical joy, and not even a fool would turn his back on it.

The waitress offered more tea and Rudy smiled and declined. Carlotta had been the gift he had longed for, but Vincenzo had been an unexpected bonus. What man wouldn't want a son like him? Discovering Vincenzo's true profession hadn't lowered him in Rudy's estimation, it had elevated him. Rudy had wanted better for his own son, he admired a man who strove to make the world a better place. He had hoped that Vincenzo would see his handing over his former business associates as more than the necessary act it was, as more than a means to both their ends. He had hoped he would see it, too, as a symbolic gesture, a true throwing in with him and his.

It had never occurred to him that what he was doing would rip them apart. At the time Vincenzo's anger and pain had baffled him, but now it all made sense. His pain, his outburst, his rejection of Rudy, had come from his own guilt. Vincenzo was the one thing a good liar shouldn't be—he was a romantic. He really believed in absolute right and wrong, which was not unlike believing in unicorns: they didn't exist, but the idea of them was very pretty, and there were many things that could be mistaken for one. Vincenzo had cared about Steelgrave, and he had betrayed him, and that was Wrong.

Rudy hadn't known any of that, and it had cost him another son. But he was not going to allow it to take that son's life.

While Carlotta had pinned her hopes of Vincenzo's return on the government in the form of Frank McPike, Rudy had made some phone calls. He still had power, had connections with people who had connections, people who could get things done, and would if he asked. He'd seen no reason to tell his wife about his efforts. Why stir things up with talk of the side of his life she preferred to pretend didn't exist?

Eventually even Frank was forced to admit defeat. He'd told Rudy first, had even asked him, circumspectly, if there wasn't something he could do. That question had told Rudy all he needed to know about Frank's commitment to Vincenzo, about the level of his attachment. Still, he had not tipped his hand. When—if—the time was right, he would confide in Frank McPike. Not before.

Carlotta's despair had brought her to the decision that a Mass in memorial should be said for her missing son. That had seemed harmless enough, and Rudy had been more than willing to fly home with her to help her arrange it, but when she decided Frank McPike was to deliver Vincenzo's eulogy and publicly clear his name . . . .

They had argued about it, violently—he had tried to make her see how dangerous it would be for Vincenzo when he was returned; he had nearly told her what he was doing, but there had been no leads, nothing but hope, and he'd been afraid. What good would it do, building up her hopes? And one thing about his Carlotta, she stuck to her guns; her Vincenzo's name had to be cleared, he couldn't be left to be thought a criminal.

After that she seemed to reach a kind of acceptance, a peace, that Rudy was loath to break. And they had gone back to Arizona.

Word came nearly seven months later: Vincenzo had been found. Negotiations for his release had gone smoothly; the men that held him had their price and Rudy paid them without complaint. He had come close to telling Carlotta, but Vincenzo's illness had stopped him. Again, what was the point of building up her hopes, of giving her back her son only to watch him die?

 _You didn't tell her because you are a coward._ Rudy acknowledged that this was true. What was the point of lying to oneself?

He'd had Vincenzo taken to a clinic, gotten him the very best of care. They nursed him through his fever and the delirium it brought. The demons that haunted him took shape in his words, the guilt that festered in his conscience seethed and boiled and finally erupted. At last the fever broke; physically Vincenzo was restored to an uncertain good health. But the demons remained, more tangible than reality to Vincenzo.

No, "demons" was wrong. There was only one ghost haunting Vincenzo, and Rudy was waiting to meet him.

He'd been stunned by what he'd heard, stunned by Vincenzo's pain and guilt, but even more so by the love he'd heard in those odd moments when the weight of his distress would somehow lift, by the passion and the lust. Never for a moment had he considered that.

Distasteful as it all was, it made everything so much easier. Salvatore was not at the heart of Vincenzo's problems, he was the heart of them. But that heart was still living. Perhaps all he needed to do was show Vincenzo that. If not, they would proceed from there.

Steelgrave's prompt call had come as no surprise. Rudy suggested they meet at one of the restaurants at his hotel, and Steelgrave agreed immediately, but with a condition: Rudy's word that he stay the hell away from his family. Amused by his bravado, Rudy had acceded to the demand without argument.

Now he watched a moment as Salvatore stood in the doorway in carefully concealed uncertainty, then Rudy motioned him over.

Salvatore stood respectfully, waiting as Rudy stood, offered his hand, and reseated himself. Rudy let the silence play out for a moment before asking after Salvatore's health.

"Very well, thank you."

The waitress must have seen Salvatore's arrival; she was there offering a menu, which he declined in favor of a cup of coffee. Rudy accepted more tea. When she was gone, Rudy went straight to the point.

"Since I'm sure your niece was very thorough in repeating everything I said to her, I'm not going to waste your time or mine by repeating it all."

Salvatore nodded. "She said that Vinnie's sick, and that you seem to think that I can help. What she couldn't tell me was what was wrong with him, or—you should pardon my bluntness—why I should give a damn."

Rudy nodded. This was the response he had expected. "The details of Vincenzo's abduction are unimportant." He paused the most imperceptible of pauses to allow what he knew was coming.

"Abduction?" Salvatore asked, frowning in confusion. "What? What are you talking about? Who abducted him?"

And there was the concern Rudy knew was hiding. "He was privately investigating the disappearance of a priest who had disappeared in El Salvador, and he stirred up some of the wrong people. As I say, the details aren't important. What matters is, he became gravely ill, running a high fever. It was at that point that he became delusional and started having conversations with people who weren't there—relatives, mostly. The doctors said that as the fever went down, his lucidity would return. The fever broke, but after a time we discovered that perhaps so had Vincenzo. Whenever he is alone, he talks to you. A psychiatrist was brought in, but Vincenzo refused to speak to him. He seemed to be afraid of him, for reasons none of us understand. He is willing to take the medication the man prescribed, which has been a blessing; he says it makes things quieter in his head.

"I cannot honestly say whether Vincenzo believes you are alive or dead; the only thing that's certain is that he believes you are there, with him."

Rudy stopped talking, stirred his tea, then took a sip. Salvatore's poker face was admirable. If he had not had reason to know better, Rudy would have been worried that his plan might not succeed. Salvatore waited politely for him to continue, and after another sip of tea, he did.

"As for why you should give a damn. I understand that you have good reason to be angry with Vincenzo. But you and I are the same kind of men. We're businessmen, and we know the risks of this business include betrayal. I don't believe you are so naive as to mistake business matters with personal ones."

There was some minute change in Salvatore's face—a flash of anger, of outrage, of protest—then it was gone. Rudy similarly kept his pleasure to himself. He had Salvatore cornered nicely.

"Of course you're right about that," Salvatore replied graciously. "But it seems to me that what you just described is why I shouldn't give a damn."

Rudy nodded. "Yes, you're right. If your relationship with Vincenzo was merely professional, I've given you no reason to return with me. But, of course, your relationship was much more than professional."

"You're mistaken about that," Salvatore interrupted. He was holding himself stiffly, his anger in check. "Our relationship was less than personal. It was based on lies."

Rudy gave this attempt at extrication a minute smile. "Please, let's not play this game. I've heard his conversations with you. I've heard the intimate things he's talked about." Salvatore said nothing, and Rudy sighed. "Do you want me to repeat the things he said?" he asked gently. "The words he used to describe your nights together?" There, the cool detachment was leaving Salvatore's face as shock and humiliation took its place. "Do you want me to repeat what he said you did to get him into your bed?"

"No—" Salvatore was no longer able to meet his eyes.

Rudy nodded, satisfied with his results. "Vincenzo is not like us. He lives by the rules of his heart. With you, he broke those rules, and in the process, broke his heart." He drank some tea, letting the shock dissipate. "Of course I was astonished to discover just what your relationship with Vincenzo had been. Under other circumstances . . . ." Rudy let his sentence trail off, not bothering to elaborate on what his reaction to these unacceptable activities would have been in other, better days. "But that's no matter. The important thing here is Vincenzo's health. Not only his mental state—though I believe your presence might facilitate a return to reality—but his physical health. I did not make the decision to come to you lightly; it was made only after the most serious of developments. Vincenzo has several times done things to injure himself. At least one of these was, by his own admission, a suicide attempt. Salvatore," Rudy said sharply, waiting until Salvatore met his eyes. He looked into their defiance and pain with calm, and, he hoped, kindness. "This is going to stop. My son's life is at risk, and I am afraid that unless something is done—" He stopped, momentarily unwilling to admit his bone-deep terror. There was a crisis on the horizon; every instinct told him so. "You are going to come back with me to do what you can to help him." He paused for a moment, and added more gently, "Which is what I believe you want to do."

All the defiance had drained away. What Rudy saw now was sorrow and incomprehension. "What time do we leave?"

~~~

**_I Know the Dream You're Dreamin' Of_ **

After he left Aiuppo, Sonny's state of shock had lasted into early evening. He hadn't eaten at lunch, and was not hungry for dinner, but after wandering aimlessly through his apartment until late in the night, he'd forced himself to heat up something and at least try to eat.

Vinnie coming back into his life wasn't bad enough; him being broken wasn't bad enough; no, he had to bring Rudy Aiuppo with him, thinking he was a fag, no way for Sonny to defend himself against this ridiculous idea. When he saw Vinnie again, the first thing he was going to do was teach him a thing or two about keeping his goddamn mouth shut. Bad enough being tagged by one of Aiuppo's guys, but what were the odds of Aiuppo having ties to Vinnie—that is, ties beyond the logical one of being the bull's eye in one of the OCB's dart games? Married to Vinnie's mother—that still tickled him. The whole thing was really pretty funny, if you left out the part where Vinnie started talking to himself about stuff he shouldn't've talked about at all. And the part where he tried to eat his gun. Was that how he'd done it? Aiuppo hadn't said, and Sonny hadn't asked, but it didn't seem likely. And Sonny didn't much want to think about what other method Vinnie might have chosen.

He managed to eat, managed to make himself lie still in the darkness, even if sleep was on some other planet. He lay there quietly and thought about Vinnie. _Why'm I doing this?_ He kept asking the question, unwilling to accept the answer: _It's Vinnie._ He tried to tell himself that wasn't good enough, that Vinnie meant nothing to him, nothing but bad memories, but—

It was a lie he couldn't make himself believe.

_How'd I miss that Aiuppo married Carlotta Terranova? There must've been something about it in the paper—_

Truth was, though, he skimmed over a lot of that stuff, the things that reminded him of his old life, and what it could have been like. Rudy Aiuppo's power and savvy were something Sonny had aspired to—he got in, he made a fortune and a name for himself, and he retired, all without the cops ever touching him.

_And now, thanks to Terranova, he thinks you're a fag._

Yeah, and when Sonny saw Vinnie, he was going to punch him in the mouth for that one.

He met Aiuppo at the airport the next morning and they boarded the plane like strangers. Next to him, Aiuppo slept. There had been no small talk between them—a tentative relief, one Sonny was grateful for even as he dreaded its end. He hadn't experienced that kind of blinding humiliation since the moment he realized how Vinnie had deceived him. The image of Vinnie sharing those things they'd done together in the dark was more than enough to convince Sonny he was bad off; the suicide attempt was superfluous.

There were a number of things Sonny didn't remember about his "last day." He remembered clearly (or thought he did) the long, lonely trip to the Catskills, Vinnie driving, neither of them saying anything. He'd wanted to ask why, but it wasn't the time for it. He wanted to push Vinnie out of the car. He wanted to kill him, wanted to tell him to pull over, wanted to—

They had. Vinnie had pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and Sonny had lunged for him, kissing him, his hand in Vinnie's pants. They hadn't looked at each other afterward, hadn't spoken—

No. Vinnie had said something. "I don't know what Pat's got planned for your bachelor party, but it'll never top that." Low, under his breath, almost to himself. Sonny had agreed, but privately. He hadn't said anything.

The party itself was a blur of jokes and drinks and uneasiness, of watching Vinnie while pretending not to.

He didn't remember killing Pat. He remembered the exhaustion afterward, sort of like remembering the cigarette but not the fuck. Weird. He remembered Vinnie's shocked face, and Sid, sitting next to him, whimpering and puking. He remembered girls coming in, and then it was like he took a nap—the next thing he knew, he was alone with Vinnie, Vinnie acting odd. The call from Aldo. Vinnie's face, guilt and something else. He'd wanted to kill him then, with his own hands, nothing between his skin and Vinnie's. But there were cops on the way, and he had to get away.

Why had he gone to the Rialto? He couldn't remember what he'd been thinking, where he'd been trying to get to (not to—away from—Vinnie, the cops, prison, death. Was Aldo still burying Patrice? Would Aldo stay loyal? Of course he would, he was Joe Baglia's son—anyway, his sister would kill him, if he sold Sonny out. Sonny grinned at that). Why did he go to a movie theatre?

But Vinnie had been there, on his tail (in more ways than one). What had they done there? Fought, Sonny remembered the punches. Why were they locked in? Did Vinnie lock the doors? It didn't make any sense to him. And, most bizarrely, he remembered singing, dancing, and Vinnie being afraid of him. Remembered pounding Vinnie's head on the floor. Remembered the cops pounding on the door, and he had to get out. Aldo hadn't buried the body, they were going to put a needle in his arm— _No—!_

Had Aldo buried Pat? Sonny still wasn't sure. When he woke up in the hospital, the only thing he wanted to know was, where's Vinnie? 

_Where was Vinnie? Gone. Forever._

 

At the airport in New York they rented a car and Sonny got behind the wheel. The drive to Vinnie's house was worth the trip. Sonny hadn't realized how much he had missed New York, how much he wanted to come home. Not that there was any way in hell he could stay, but still, just breathing the air seemed right.

Rudy was watching him, impassively, but it was making Sonny nervous. To deflect attention from himself, he asked, "What did they do to him? When they had him."

"Very little, really," Aiuppo answered. "Most of the physical damage was caused by neglect, and the struggle to subdue him, rather than any kind of torture. He was left in a hole and half-starved when my people found him."

"So what was the point?"

"He was asking the wrong questions about the wrong people. They wanted him to stop, and to send a message to anyone else who might be foolish enough to try the same thing. What saved him were the mercenary tendencies of one of the men in charge. Knowing of Vincenzo's connections, he thought he might be worth something. Since they weren't trying to get information out of him, there was no purpose to torture, and undamaged merchandise is always more valuable."

"And he was right," Sonny said.

"Being right didn't help him much, in the end."

The quiet words sent a thrill of bloodlust through Sonny. "I don't know what you want me to do."

"To be honest, Salvatore, I don't know myself. I only know Vincenzo wants you. Three months in a private clinic, two months at home, haven't helped. I don't know what else to do."

That didn't give him the slightest confidence. The silence fell back over them, and Sonny's thoughts went to his old neighborhood and Joey Schneider. Joey lived with his sister, Kate, and her husband, Jimmy Rizzolo. He'd come home from the war shell-shocked, all screwed up. Days he spent looking after the Rizzolo kids; nights, he hung around the pool hall. He was good, too—could've made some money hustling, but he didn't have the edge for it. Sonny remembered that Joey was the only guy he knew who always paid back the cigarettes he bummed. Always.

Every few months Joey would go out looking for a job. He always found one; he was a nice guy, smart, he cleaned up real good. Joey would start his job, and by noon, Kate would be there to take him home. Sonny could remember seeing her walking down the street with him, holding his hand, tears running down his face.

That was up 'til the last time, when instead of calling Kate, Joey used the gun he'd found in the cash register of Carmichael's Emporium.

It didn't kill him, but nobody ever saw him again. When he was released from the hospital, Kate brought him home, and he didn't come out of the house again until they carried him out. Was that Vinnie's future?

"Why was he over there?"

"The son of a friend of his mother's. A priest. I'm sure you've heard what's been going on over there. The boy disappeared; his mother asked for help."

Sonny wasn't surprised. Money to panhandlers, to the few relatives who were speaking to him, rides for anybody stranded—there'd been that whole week Vinnie had driven one of the dealers home, all the way the hell to Mystic Island, a good hour's drive, after her shift ended at one. Sonny couldn't believe it when he found out she wasn't even putting out—that Vinnie didn't even expect her to. _Who did he think he was, anyway? Who put him in charge of saving the world? Why does he have to be a hero?_

As though reading his mind, Aiuppo said, "He was doing this for his mother. The priest's mother was a friend of hers, they were friends of the family."

 _Yeah, OK, that made some sense._ "He's got a hard head. It's not easy getting through to him."

"You'll just have to do your best."

The implacability of that statement leached away any attempt there might have been at kindness. It was a sentence of some kind—life or death, he didn't know which, only that there would be no reprieve.

It was late when they arrived at the house in Brooklyn. At first glance it might have seemed inadvisable to bring Vinnie here, if they wanted to keep his presence a secret. But Sonny understood the logic behind it. Here in his own home, Vinnie would feel safer. And as for prying eyes—the neighbors would know enough to keep their noses out of Rudy Aiuppo's business, and the feds had no reason to be watching. This place belonged to one of their own. As long as Vinnie hadn't been seen going inside, no one would be any the wiser.

Vinnie had done some redecorating since Sonny had been there—if you wanted to call getting rid of all the furniture and replacing it with a sound system, a TV, and a leather sofa "decorating." Sonny wondered why he'd gotten rid of the old stuff.

He wasn't introduced to the man sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper; he didn't need to be. Pooch had been with Aiuppo so long it was about impossible to have heard of Rudy Aiuppo and not know who Pooch was. He was up in an instant, taking Aiuppo's coat, asking how his flight was. Sonny felt like a piece of furniture.

"Take Salvatore's coat," Aiuppo prodded quietly, and Pooch accepted it, hung it in the closet without a word. But when Aiuppo asked about Vinnie, Pooch looked at Sonny for a long, mistrustful moment before Aiuppo prompted him to answer. _Not trusted, huh? What's the old man been telling you about me?_

"He's been real quiet since you left. He's been kinda in'n out of it, but I got him to play some cards with me. I've been keeping a real close eye on him. He hasn't tried to—you know. He mostly just stays in his room, talking to—" Pooch stopped short, gave Sonny a quick, perplexed look. "Talking to himself," he finished lamely.

Sonny got it. This wasn't about what Aiuppo had said; it was what Vinnie was saying. "How many guys are involved in this deal?" Sonny asked, startling both men, taking their conversation off-track.

"The total number of people who know Vincenzo is alive—and know who he is—is very small. Outside my own circle, there is only the psychiatrist we brought in. The number of people who know you're alive—who I have given that information—are here in this room."

Sonny nodded. That was acceptable. "Where is he?"

Another worried look from Pooch to Aiuppo. "I just give him his pills," Pooch said finally. "He wouldn't take 'em earlier, he was talking about going out— He's probably asleep by now."

 _You're lying,_ Sonny thought, but he wasn't going to argue about it. "Yeah, fine, in the morning, then. Where'm I sleeping?"

"Show Salvatore to Vincenzo's room," Aiuppo ordered. "If Vincenzo is asleep, try not to wake him."

Pooch's reluctance was so profound, it was practically another presence in the house, but he picked up Sonny's suitcase and led the way down the hall. When they were standing outside Vinnie's door, Pooch started to say something, but Sonny cut him off, stepping closer to whisper in his face. "I know what you been hearing, but don't let it give you any kind of stupid ideas, like thinking you know anything about me, because you don't!" His ferocity—hushed though it was—was enough to make Pooch back away. Sonny grabbed his suitcase from Pooch's hand, then waited for him to leave.

For a second Sonny stood looking at the door to Vinnie's bedroom; then he shoved aside his uncertainty, opened the door, and went in.

 _Too thin,_ was Sonny's first thought, staring at Vinnie, who was looking out the window. He wore a sweatshirt that hung on him like on a hanger, and a pair of sweatpants that had been cinched ridiculously tight to keep them up.

Sonny had heard Vinnie's voice from outside the door; now he realized with a start that Vinnie was talking to him. _Pills must not've kicked in yet._

"I didn't know what to do. I didn't know. I didn't have the experience to deal with finding I actually cared about you— They act like that can't happen, and when it does, you can't tell them or you'll get pulled off the case." He sighed and leaned his forehead against the cold glass. "Maybe that would'a been the best thing, huh?"

"Maybe," Sonny agreed gently, hoping to ease the shock.

There was no shock. Vinnie didn't even turn around. "Why couldn't you ever once just see through my lies, huh? It would'a been so much easier if you'd just caught on an' whacked me. What difference did it make which one of us ended up dead? And if it'd been me, you think I would'a haunted you, you think I wouldn't'a let you alone?" Another deep sigh. "I dunno. Maybe I would have."

"Vinnie," Sonny said, trying to keep his voice calm. "Vinnie."

At last he turned away from the window, looked directly into Sonny's eyes. His eyes were dull and tired, his hair a shaggy mess, and while he had shaved, calling him clean-shaven would be pushing it.

For a second, Vinnie frowned at him, puzzled. Then he looked around the room. "Huh. Those red pill're better'n the orange'n white ones. I don't even remember going to bed, let alone falling asleep. An' this dream looks a lot realer. Look," he went on patiently, "there's no gun in the house. You know that, Rudy got rid of it. The stove's electric. They took away my razor, all I got's an electric, but there's knives in the kitchen—see?" He held out his right arm earnestly, showing Sonny his hacked-at wrist. "I could go for one'a those, but I never get enough time to myself, anymore than I can just take all the pills, not with Pooch watchin' me every minute. If you really want me to do it, you're gonna hafta tell me how to get them off my back first."

_Rabbit hole, hell, this is a mineshaft I've fallen in._

"Yeah, yeah," Vinnie answered his silence. "I should'a let that goon, Patrick, use the electricity on me, or taken a dive off that bridge—well, it's too late for that now. Now that I finally want a way out, they've closed off all the exits. Can't you just go away?" he pleaded. "I'll do it, just go away—"

Sonny moved toward him, grabbing him, kissing him—it was better than slugging him, and he had to shut him up. He could feel Vinnie holding his breath, holding himself very still, and Sonny backed away. The look of pure terror on Vinnie's face did something to Sonny he didn't understand. _Don't touch him,_ he thought even as he reached out to stroke Vinnie's cheek.

The change was abrupt, like punching a button on a radio and switching from the middle of one song to the middle of another. Vinnie grinned at him, that inciting-to-riot grin, and wrapped his hand around Sonny's. "In my mother's house?" he whispered. "Jeez, Sonny, are you nuts?" But he moved closer, this time initiating the kiss, his eyes closing luxuriously. And it was old times again, Vinnie pushed against him, tongue in his mouth. Not that he'd made a move on Vinnie there in his mother's house, but the thought had never been far from his mind.

Vinnie pulled away from him again. "This is nuts," he repeated, but the retreat was reluctant, and the way his face looked—cheeks flushed, lips swollen, eyes bright with wanting—made it seem quite sane to Sonny.

Still, he stopped, not wanting to push, not knowing what pushing might do. "Yeah, you're right, we always got later."

"I wish we did. I wish I could just come back to this moment—God, I miss you." He dropped to the bed as if his knees had suddenly gone out on him.

"You don't have to miss me, I'm right here." He felt like a fool saying it, but Vinnie thought he was a dream or a ghost, a figment in his own mind.

"Yeah, you're always right here, aren't you?" That please-God-fuck-me look was gone, replaced by something serious and sad. He looked away from Sonny, up toward the window. "Only you don't—" He broke off. "I can't get rid'a you no matter what I do." His head fell forward, into his hands. "The rest of 'em I can hide from if I sleep, but you won't let me sleep, and even if I can drop off, you're still there, always in the shadows. Why won't you let me sleep?!" He was off the bed, up in Sonny's face, slamming him into the wall. "Why the fuck won't you let me sleep!?!"

It happened so quickly, Sonny had no time to react, but when Vinnie's fist crashed into the wall next to his head, he pushed Vinnie away. "Cut it out! What the hell are you talking about, won't let you sleep? What'm I doing to keep you awake?" Still, he reached out to touch.

Vinnie slapped his hand away. "Quit playing games with me! One minute you're goin' for my zipper an' everything's fine, the next you're tellin' me how everything that happened was my fault, how I cheated you, how I killed you—" Vinnie ducked his head, as if he couldn't continue to meet Sonny's eyes. "I did not kill you." He raised his head, looking at Sonny defiantly.

"Who the fuck said you did?" Sonny asked, exasperated. He took a deep breath, damping down his temper. "Look, you want to sleep so bad, why don't you lay down, close your eyes?"

Vinnie was watching him, his suspicion clear. "I don't know this game."

"It's not a game," Sonny said, "it's how a person goes to sleep." He pulled the rumpled blankets from the bed, and remade it, then pulled the window shade. "Get in. Close your eyes. Go to sleep."

"Oh, yeah, and what're you gonna be doing?"

"What do you want me to do, sing you a lullaby? I'm gonna go to sleep, too. I'm beat." Self-conscious under Vinnie's scrutiny, Sonny picked up his suitcase and dropped it onto Pete's bed. "Since it looks like I'm going to be here a while, I'm going to unpack. You don't have a problem with sharing your drawer space, right?" Sonny opened a bureau drawer, pushed Vinnie's underwear to one side and began removing his clothes from his suitcase, shaking them out and re-folding them before putting them in the drawer next to Vinnie's.

Vinnie watched him for a long time with angry suspicion. "You never did this before. C'm'on, when do the girls show up?"

"You got girls coming?" Sonny asked, continuing to unpack. "You want me to clear out?"

Vinnie laughed shortly. "If only it was that easy."

"You want me outta here, just say the word. There's better places I could be." Sonny started taking the clothes back out of the drawer, putting them back in his suitcase, wondering if it was really going to be this easy.

Vinnie's voice stopped him, angry and uncertain and afraid. "Will you come back?"

Sonny stopped moving his clothes, looked him in the eye. "You want me to?"

Vinnie said nothing, just stared back at him. "I never expected to miss you. Nobody ever told me I'd get lonely for you."

"Yeah, well, there's lots'a things they don't tell you. It's not like I was expecting you in my life either, you know."

"You ever think maybe it's all some cosmic joke?"

"You mean like this is how God gets his kicks?" Sonny hated conversations like this; existentialism, or whatever it was, made him want to smack somebody—what was the point to it?

"Well, think about it. The only person in my life ever really loved me just for who I am, no alterations needed, and it turns out to be you? What else can it be but a big joke from on high?"

"Bad luck," Sonny answered. He was tired of moving his clothes from one place to another; he left what was in the drawer there, closed it and the suitcase, and pushed the suitcase under the unoccupied bed. "You were mine, I was yours. Big deal." 

"Is it that easy?"

It was only just now dawning on Sonny that he didn't really know Vinnie, that what he knew was a carefully constructed facade meant to get past his defenses. "Anyhow, what're you talking about, loved you for yourself? I don't even know you; all I know is the guy you pretended to be." The words, the thought, pushed Vinnie to a safer distance; it was easier to look at his haunted eyes and feel nothing, easier not to feel love for an illusion. "Your guys had all the info in the world on me. They figured we had a lot in common, and what we didn't, you could fake."

Vinnie was shaking his head. "No, no."

"What, no? Which part of that's not right, huh?"

"They didn't send me. They—Frank—didn't want me to even have the assignment. He was all the time trying to tell me what to do, but I wouldn't listen to him, I wouldn't put on the persona he told me to. Sure I had information on you, I knew all the stuff you can get from surveillance photos and wiretaps, but that stuff was useless, really. When I went at you, it was with just myself because I knew you'd respond to me, and you did."

"Why?" It was a question he'd never been able to answer. He knew how the feds operated—they picked up one of your guys for something, offered him a deal in exchange for getting one of their guys in. Then you had a worm in your organization. And the worm tried to move up, to get more information, to turn in more of your guys, who would rat out more, 'til your whole organization crumbled. That's the way it worked in theory, anyway. _Nobody ever went after anybody at my level, not starting from scratch. Nobody. It was stupid. Except for the part about it working. Yeah, yeah, but that was—a cosmic joke? Fuck that. It was bad luck. But there had to be some reason for him to have done it in the first place._ "And if you tell me it was your job, I'll kill you," he added.

"It was," Vinnie insisted. And then, relenting, "It was my job. I started after you—after Dave—because of Stan. But that wasn't all of it, it wasn't bloodlust, it was my job!"

_Stan? Who the hell is Stan?_

"It wasn't you I was after, really, it was Dave. You were just part of the package. And as time went on—the better I got to know you, the harder it was to think about how it was going to end." Vinnie recited the words with a kind of tired desperation, like a penitent who badly needs forgiveness but who can't relinquish his sin. And Sonny wondered how many times Vinnie had done this, had confessed and explained, had begged forgiveness from his own conscience, only to have his demons _(me)_ return the moment he closed his eyes to sleep. _Is that what it would've been like if I'd killed him when I should have?_ At the time he'd thought himself weak, letting himself be swayed by those heavenly blue eyes. Now he wondered if he was lucky.

"What was I supposed to do? It was my job. It's not like I could have just quit and started really working for you, even if I'd wanted to. We had no damn future—

"I'm tired of talking about this, tired of going over it and over it—what's the point? I can't change the past any better than I could change the future back then—"

Sonny grabbed his shoulders, gave him a hard shake. "Dammit, shut up!"

A brief knock interrupted them. Sonny let go of Vinnie, and Aiuppo came in, followed by Pooch, who carried a tray. "Vincenzo, since you're still awake, I thought you should eat something. You skipped dinner, I understand." He motioned Pooch to put the tray down.

Vinnie had turned away when Aiuppo came in, not so much ignoring his stepfather as playing possum; he stood staring out the window as though he were alone on a street corner, waiting for a bus.

"Vincenzo." Aiuppo's voice had taken on a careful sternness. When Vinnie didn't respond, Aiuppo sent Pooch from the room. "Sit down and eat. Please."

Vinnie turned around and looked at the two plates of spaghetti. "Yeah. That's very funny." He walked to the corner of the room, as far away as he could get in the small space.

Aiuppo turned to him. "Salvatore, eat. There's no reason you should starve because Vincenzo is being stubborn."

"Thanks." Sonny picked up a plate and fork and sat down on Pete's bed. He ate a forkful of spaghetti. "C'm'on, have some. It's good."

Vinnie was looking back and forth between them. "What?"

"Vincenzo, eat your dinner."

Vinnie shut his eyes tight, stood rubbing the palms of his hands together as though he could somehow wipe away his thoughts. He was pressed so hard against the wall he seemed to be trying to push himself backwards through it. Even Aiuppo looked spooked. "I hate dreams like this, the ones where I have to go to sleep in the dream before I can wake up—it makes me nervous to close my eyes with you here. But at least I can get rid of it. Just shut off the lights and close my eyes, you'll all be gone in the morning." He picked up a strand of spaghetti, slurped it into his mouth. "You're right, it's good. But hey, that's no surprise. Always the best for you, right Sonny? Hot 'n' cold running showgirls, my brother as your personal confessor, and now you've got Rafael Aiuppo as your private chef. I'm real impressed." He ate another strand of spaghetti. "Yeah, but I don't want to fill up on this; I'll wait 'til the caviar arrives." Vinnie crawled into bed, his back to them. "Before you guys go out for dancing at the Rainbow Room, or to play the arcades at Coney Island, or whatever the fuck you spectres do in your off hours, do me a favor and shut out the lights, OK?" And he dragged the blankets up over his head.

"Vincenzo," Aiuppo tried again, but Sonny returned his plate to the tray, picked up the tray, and left the room.

Sonny carried the tray out to the kitchen and set it down on the table. He didn't know why he'd left, only that staying seemed like a very bad idea. _"Hot'n' cold running showgirls, my brother as your personal confessor—" What the fuck does that mean?_ Half the stuff Vinnie said made Sonny feel like he'd been dropped into the middle of a movie, cast as the hero who was supposed to save the day and it was making him angry, confused, and frustrated.

The few mouthfuls of food he'd had jump-started his appetite, so he sat down and resumed eating. Aiuppo had followed him; he stood watching him eat with silent disapproval, and for some reason Sonny felt thirteen again, all pissed-off insolence. "If you think it'll help if I don't eat, I'll put this down the garbage disposal," he said. It was stupid, baiting him like this; he needed Aiuppo's good will. _For what?_ he wondered, and couldn't come up with an answer.

"He's getting worse," Aiuppo said quietly. "Perhaps it was a mistake to bring you here."

 _For that. If he decides he doesn't need you, how tough would it be to get rid'a you? Not tough._ But he couldn't bring himself to be conciliatory—with this adolescent anger had come a soaring sense of invulnerability. "Maybe it was," Sonny agreed, his tone cavalier. "Anything to drink?" From one of the cabinets behind him, Rudy produced a bottle of wine. He poured Sonny a glass, and after the slightest pause, poured himself one and sat down.

Sonny finished his plate and pushed it aside, moving Vinnie's into its place. If this was going to be his last meal, he might as well have his fill. _And I might as well have some answers._ "What's up between the two of you?"

When Aiuppo didn't answer, Sonny looked up from his plate. "He barely talks to you, he pretends you're not there—sounds dysfunctional to me."

Aiuppo still said nothing, but the impervious poker face was gone. There was loss and bewilderment in his eyes, the look of a man who had had love and had it taken away, with no explanation why. _Got you too, huh?_ He still had enough sense not to say that to the old man.

"My relationship with my son is—"

Sonny cut off the stiff words. "Yeah, yeah, none of my business." He let his own angry glare finish his thought: _And my relationship with him is none of yours, so butt out._ He had finished both plates of spaghetti; now he drained the last of the wine from his glass and stood up. "Good night."

Aiuppo didn't answer.

Sonny wished there was someplace else to sleep; he didn't want to go back to that lunatic conversation with Vinnie, at least not until he'd slept some. But Pete Terranova's old bed was the only unspoken for sleeping accommodation in the house, unless he was willing to settle for the floor. And he wasn't.

The lights were out when Sonny went back into Vinnie's bedroom. He pulled his suitcase out from underneath Pete's bed, felt around for his pajamas, but if they were there he couldn't recognize them by touch. He gave up, stripped down to his underwear, and pushed his suitcase back under the bed.

Vinnie was snoring. It wasn't a sound he'd missed, and there was something disorienting about it, both in its familiarity and its displacement. If he was going to hear Vinnie snoring, it should be coming from right next to his ear, not the other side of the room, and they should squashed together on the sofa.

He got under the covers in the narrow bed, feeling like he was climbing into his own coffin. The sheets smelled musty; the bed had probably been made up for years. _"My brother as your private confessor." Doesn't make any sense. And where is his brother, anyway? With Vinnie coming unglued, you'd think he'd be here, doing something, like saying a prayer for him or something, anyway._ He thought about getting up, seeing what information he could pry out of the old man, but the crack of light at the doorsill had disappeared a few minutes after he'd laid down, and the house was dead silent. _His mother's not here because of her heart condition, he doesn't want her all upset. But where's—_

 _Pete's dead, isn't he?_ Sonny wasn't sure, but he thought that was right. _Yeah, and I'm dead—at least, he thinks so. Why does he think that?_ There was something wrong with this whole set-up. What had happened in the Rialto that Vinnie—that everyone—thought he was dead? Sonny had never stopped to think about it, had simply taken it as a piece of extraordinary luck and run with it as far as he could. Now he was wondering about those missing pieces. Slowly he went over it all, searching the details. _Yeah, OK, what do I remember?_

_Getting up that morning and talking to Theresa. Vinnie acting like everything was all right, all the while planning to—No, that's not what he was planning. Cops, he was planning. Did he tell me that? Skip it. We drove up there, didn't talk to each other. I tried to take a nap before the party, but I couldn't sleep. I remember the party; remember the girls, remember them moving Patrice's body, putting Scullisi in the closet with Royce . . . did Aldo ever pop Royce? I was gonna give him to Vinnie, only . . . . Fuck, forget Royce. Everybody was gone, just me an' Vinnie. I wanted him to tell me, I wanted him to explain it, to tell me why he'd rat me out to Patrice when—Jesus Christ, a few hours earlier he'd been kissing me like there was no tomorrow—_

_Hell, there wasn't. He was stalling for time 'til the cops came, only Aldo called and wrecked his plans. I got a car, drove to the theatre— What? That doesn't make any sense! I had to get away from the cops, so I grabbed some guy's car, Vinnie ran after me, then he was driving after me—a truck? Yeah, yeah, that's right, some old piece of crap. I stopped someplace to wait for him, I was gonna bash his brains in with a golf club—_

Was that right? It felt right, but wrong at the same time. He remembered the golf clubs vividly, getting them out of the trunk of the car, he remembered wanting to swing one, slam it into some guy's (Vinnie's?) head, only he didn't. He drove off again, Vinnie still chasing him.

 _Yeah, yeah, I got to the theatre, just gonna duck in one way and out the other, grab Vinnie's truck while he was still inside—why? Who cares why?! To get away! Only the doors were locked. So we played some music and had a fight._ That couldn't be right, but Sonny couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. _He said he **cared for me deeply**. _ Those words were branded on his memory, though he tried not to think of them; the rage they induced was homicidal. _I should'a killed him right there. The cops were there, pounding on the door, only it didn't matter because Aldo had buried Patrice—_

_Only he hadn't. Vinnie said—_

Something was wrong. _How would Vinnie know if Aldo had buried Patrice? Lethal injection, they were trying to break in to put a needle in my arm, and Vinnie was just going to let them do it._

 _Why hadn't they?_ Sonny had no idea. When he'd awakened in the hospital, it had been with no memory at all, surrounded by doctors and one cop. Eventually the doctors had cleared out, and when they did, he'd made a deal with the cop. _The cop must've told 'em I was dead, but what was I doing in the hospital?_ Sonny, who had always known when to keep his mouth shut—even if he hadn't always been able to do it—hadn't asked any questions. He'd just given the cop the money for his freedom and put the past behind him. Who cared what anyone thought, as long as they weren't looking for him?

Tracy had been shocked to see him, but happy, too; he'd watched her for a long time before he contacted her, made sure no one else was watching her. "But Vinnie told me—" she'd said to him, and he'd turned away. He didn't want to hear what Vinnie had said; whatever it was, it was probably a lie anyway.

There were no answers in his own mind, and now Vinnie was doubly untrustworthy; his reality was so mixed up, finding the truth would be impossible even if he tried to be honest.

 _The mistake Aiuppo made was talking to me, bringing me food. Vinnie thought something was up, either that the old man was humoring him or making fun of him. It was when I took the plate that he freaked out. He's not getting worse; he's just got it figured that if I don't exist, and Aiuppo was bringing me food, it must be a dream._ "What kind've dreams you been having?" _"But you don't—" I don't what?_

_What the fuck is wrong with me, why do I care—what'm I even doing here?_

Sonny was exhausted, but sleep eluded him. The bed was uncomfortable, the night sounds wrong, and there was Vinnie, so close he could touch him . . . .

 _Yeah, like I'm that stupid. Aiuppo would have me eviscerated—hell, forget that, he'd do it himself._ Still, he couldn't help thinking about it. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed Vinnie, the feel of him, the taste—

That train of thought was only going to get him into trouble. Aiuppo already thought he was a fag, and that was Vinnie's fault. What the hell had he been telling Aiuppo? Something about how Sonny got him into his bed which was—Vinnie had **never** been in his bed, not once! Why would Vinnie tell Aiuppo—or anybody—anything else?

Sonny turned his face to the wall, trying to get comfortable, trying not to listen to Vinnie's now-quiet breathing. The room was chilly; his years in California left him unprepared for the cold of a rainy New York September night. Sonny never could resist touching Vinnie; he'd always loved the way Vinnie's big, warm body felt. _Quit thinking about that! Are you trying to get yourself killed? It's not like there's room for two in these beds anyway—yeah, maybe tomorrow over breakfast I should tell Aiuppo to clear out of the room he's in, so me'n Vinnie can have the big bed._ Sonny had to bury his face in his pillow to stifle the almost-hysterical laugh that idea produced. For a moment he felt good, a little high on this crazy idea, then his mood slipped, fell to gloominess. Sonny rolled over on his stomach, propped himself up on his elbows, looking over at Vinnie. He hadn't missed Vinnie, really missed him, in all the years since he'd seen him. Now, lying practically next to him, loneliness for him was overwhelming. Touching him was out of the question. But even conjuring up images of Tracy identifying his body in the morgue had limited success against his insistent erection; if he got his hands on Vinnie, that would be that. But maybe they could talk, here in the dark, the way they'd used to sometimes, on Vinnie's sofa, or on the balcony.

"Vinnie." Sonny whispered his name into the darkness. "Vinnie. Hey, Vinnie." No response. He raised his voice a little, to just-above whispering. "Hey, Vinnie, c'm'on, wake up."

Vinnie sighed in the dark, not quite awake. "Go away, 'm tired."

"C'm'on, man, wake up."

Vinnie sighed again, then he leaned over the edge of the bed to peer under it. "We're doin' this again? What, you think I forgot you already?"

"What're you doing?" Sonny was too surprised to remember to keep his voice down.

Vinnie looked up at him in vague surprise. "What're you doin' there?"

"What would I be doing under your bed?"

Vinnie shrugged, and flopped back on the bed. "Like you ever explain anything. How come you're in Pete's bed?"

"I'd get in yours, but I think your stepfather'd have my head."

"Prob'ly so." Vinnie rolled over to face him. "Whaddaya want?"

 _Right now? You. But not quite bad enough to die for._ "Don't what?" Sonny asked.

"What?"

"Before you said I 'don't' something, don't what?"

"Don't what what?"

This was turning into an Abbott and Costello routine. "Earlier," Sonny said patiently. "You were complaining about me never going away, then you said I don't—something. You didn't say I don't what, so what?"

"You don't what," Vinnie said. "Oh."

"Oh, what?" Sonny asked.

Vinnie sighed, and there was something wrong to his voice when he answered. "You're always here, but you don't like me anymore."

 _Jesus. Well, it beats the hell outta "I care for you."_ "Don't be an idiot."

Vinnie gave wobbly laugh. "This isn't a dream, is it?" The words were slurry.

Again he wondered, _Could it be this easy?_ "No, it's not."

"Yeah, 't's what I figured." He was quiet for a moment, then, "How long we gotta stay? D'you know?"

"Stay where?" Sonny asked carefully. He had the idea they weren't talking about the same thing.

"In purgatory." Vinnie spoke carefully around his drugged up mind; finding things there seemed to be difficult at best. "Can't 'member anythin' about it, 'cept you use'ta be able to buy indulgences to stay out, and people prayin' for you gets you out faster. I wonder if Frank screamin' at people on my behalf counts as prayers—"

"This isn't purgatory, it's Brooklyn," Sonny interrupted. "What makes you think you're dead, anyway?"

"You're here, aren't you?"

There was some logic to that, but Sonny wasn't going to admit it. "I'm not dead."

"Though I thought suicides . . . I can't 'member."

 _Suicides?!_ Sonny was outraged. "I'm not dead!"

"I remember the days of judgement, when everythin' was clean and perfect and white, when I was safe. Didn't know I was dead, though, but it was all right."

"What're you talking about? If you're dead, what's Aiuppo doing here? Who's he, God?"

"If I'm not dead, I'm crazy, or what are you doin' here?"

"I told you, I'm not dead."

"And this isn't Brooklyn. This isn't my house."

"Oh, yeah? Sure looks like it to me."

"The phones don't work," Vinnie declared, as though this proved something. "If I'm alive, an' I'm at home, why don't my phones work? Where's my mother? Where's Frank? You think they could keep Frank away if I was alive? And how do you explain this?" Vinnie was up, out of bed, moving around in the dark room with intimate familiarity. He went to one of the pictures on the wall and removed it, slid out the cardboard backing. "They search my room," he said, his voice in the dark hovering between embarrassment and belligerence. "Lookin' for weapons, but I knew they'd take this away if they found it." Between the cardboard and the picture was an envelope. From it Vinnie removed a small piece of paper, and handed it to Sonny.

"What is it?" Sonny asked, bewildered. He couldn't tell anything in the unlit room.

Vinnie snapped on the desk lamp, and they both blinked at the unwelcome brightness. When Sonny could see again, he looked down at what he held in his hands: a Mass card with Vinnie's picture on one side of it.

Vinnie held one hand over his eyes, protecting them from the light. "That's the picture from my I.D. They had a memorial Mass for me. What's that mean, if I'm not dead?"

"It means they had a Mass said for you," Sonny answered. He was looking at the picture, something like nostalgia tightening the back of his throat. He tossed the card on the bed. "What else you got there?"

Vinnie offered the envelope blindly. Sonny took it, pulled out a bill of sale. "My car. Frank sold my car."

 _Fuck._ Sonny looked over the papers, found McPike's signature. He was at a loss as to how to answer this. "So, he doesn't know you're alive. That doesn't make you dead. It's not a popularity contest, you're dead just because people think you are." _I'm not dead, even though you thought I was. Think I am._ For some reason, he couldn't bring himself to say it. "Where'd you get this stuff, anyway?"

"Copped it from Rudy's pockets. I was lookin' for car keys, or money, or somethin'."

"Did you get anything?"

"Yeah, a buck-ninety-eight in change. Oh, an' this." From the nail the picture had hung on, Vinnie removed a keyring, tossed it next to Sonny on the bed. "My keychain. No keys on it, of course."

"A buck-ninety-eight won't get you far. Where're you trying to go?" Sonny put his hand on Vinnie's wrist, gently tugged him to sit next to him on the bed.

"I only need to get away from the house for a while. I don't think I can do the bridge routine, I tried and . . . it looks so cold. Maybe, if I could stick it out a few more months, 'til summer comes, it won't look so bad. It doesn't take long to jump off a bridge. It's not like cutting yourself, where they can fix it if they catch you." He unconsciously went to rub the scarred wrist Sonny still held. Sonny could feel him trembling.

"If you're dead, you can't kill yourself. It'd be redundant." This was starting to feel like one of those stupid theological debates from high school, all about the meaning of life and whether or not we were really here, stuff that didn't matter. Father Rocchetta had talked to him more than once after class about his attitude, but he'd never said anything that changed Sonny's mind about it—he'd never been able to answer the one big question—if we weren't here, what could we do about it anyway? If we weren't here, how could we even be talking about it?

"I know, I know, why don't I just not swallow the pills, just save 'em up—I tried it, but they caught on. Anyhow, it's no different than the razor, it takes too long, if they catch you, they can fix you—an' I need 'em, it's the only peace I get—" Vinnie stopped, choking back tears. "I hafta understand! I hafta feel it, I hafta know. It's the only way you'll ever let me have any peace."

"Understand what?" Sonny asked. Following Vinnie's logic was like walking a maze in the dark. He pulled Vinnie against him, felt him shiver for a moment, then Vinnie jerked away.

"What it felt like, what it feels like to—" The words wouldn't come to his lips, but Sonny could read them in his wet, agonized eyes.

"Why don't you just go back to bed?" Sonny said. He ran his hand through Vinnie's hair.

"It's the only way I got to atone," Vinnie said. "I gotta make it right, I gotta make it up to you, I gotta—"

"Make it up to me for what? For doing your job?"

"Killin' you wasn't my job."

"Yeah, but I'm not dead."

Vinnie nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, that's how I know this isn't a dream. I should'a seen it before. In all the dreams I had about you, you always told me how it was my fault, that I killed you. You never told me you weren't dead."

 _Is this a step forward?_ Sonny honestly wasn't sure, but he was getting very tired. "I wasn't here before," he told Vinnie. "I'm here now." He put his arm around Vinnie again, to pull him close, just for comfort, but Vinnie wouldn't let him.

"Stop it! This's what got me in trouble in the first place, you lovin' me! You weren't s'posed to— Why don't you stop?"

The words were a slap in the face, cold, callous. They shocked Sonny as much as they hurt him, robbed him of words. His instinct was to strike back, but he couldn't, anymore than he could have struck a child. "Put your stuff away, go back to bed."

Vinnie wasn't looking at him, wasn't listening to him. His hands were over his face, muffling whatever he was muttering to himself. Sonny got up and put the papers back in their hiding place, hung the keychain back on the wall and put the picture in front of it. As he was turning out the light, the sense of Vinnie's words came to him. "You're not s'posed to do that to someone who loves you."

~~~

Sonny awakened early in the afternoon, wrenching himself with great relief from a dream he was about to be buried alive. He was trapped in a coffin, the nails being hammered in, and each blow echoed in his ears like a thunderstorm in his head. And somehow over it, he could hear Vinnie, screaming, "Frank, will you stop that a minute!"

Sonny was alone in the room, a little disoriented. He wanted a shower, but he could hear the water running already, and he didn't much feel like cooling his heels in his underwear. He put on the same clothes he'd worn the day before and left the bedroom.

He found Pooch sitting in the hallway outside the bathroom door, which was ajar. _Must be Vinnie._ He didn't appreciate the guard dog, though he didn't doubt his past necessity. _Yeah, and what'm **I** here for, huh? To play the fucking ghost of Christmas past? _ And piling on to Sonny's anger came, _You sold his goddamn car out from under him!_ He saw Aiuppo in the living room, but ignored him, unsure he could speak without shouting. He could smell coffee, so the kitchen seemed the place to go.

Again Aiuppo followed him in, watched as he poured his coffee and began rummaging through the cupboards, looking for something to have for breakfast. Aiuppo took down cereal and a bowl, got milk from the refrigerator, a spoon from a drawer. "You and Vincenzo were up late, talking," he said.

Sonny sat down, poured cereal and milk.

"I don't know what you said to him, but he decided to take a shower this morning." There was some grudging approval in the words.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness," Sonny replied, starting to eat. He had the feeling he wasn't going to get a chance to finish even this meager breakfast.

"I want to know what is going on."

The royal command bit again, but this time Sonny was too angry to be worried. "Yeah, I've got some questions, too."

"Such as?"

"Such as why did you have a memorial Mass said for him? Why did you sell his car? Where's his mother? Where's the OCB in all this?"

"Those are not matters that concern you." Aiuppo's temper was in check, but Sonny could see it lurking.

"They're matters that concern Vinnie, and he doesn't understand what's going on. What've you told him? Anything?"

"How did you know about the Mass, about his car?" Aiuppo countered.

"He told me. He thinks he must be dead, or why else would you have done that?" Aiuppo's shocked expression was gratifying. "Whaddaya want me to tell him? And why the hell did you bring me here in the first place? You think you can play on my affection for him to get me here, then tell me the things that are hurting him aren't my concern? What is my concern?"

"Your concern is what I say it is!"

"Why is Pooch sitting outside the bathroom while he showers?" Sonny had no idea why he was asking this stupid question, except that it annoyed him on general principles.

"Because the last time we left him in the bathroom, he smashed the mirror and needed stitches. Now he believes he's dead? This is not why I brought you here!"

"Yeah, you brought me here to clean up the mess the feds made of him. Where are they, anyway?"

"For Vincenzo's safety, I have kept his whereabouts from everyone, including his employer and his mother."

Sonny nodded. "Makes sense. You know, you're the one that convinced him he's dead, not me. It's the only way he could make sense of you talking to me. You've been telling him I'm not really here, then you brought me a plate of spaghetti. What's he supposed to think?"

Aiuppo didn't argue with him, though he certainly didn't seem pleased. "Do you have any suggestions as to how to make this work?" he asked, his voice an icy challenge.

Sonny stirred the soggy cereal around with his spoon, thinking about the question. "The way I see it, I haven't even been here twenty-four hours and this is the second time you've called me on the carpet. If you wanted a miracle, you should'a taken him to Lourdes. What I need's a shower and a little time to think about things."

Aiuppo sighed. "I suppose that's fair," he conceded.

Sonny finished his coffee, got up from the table.

"Vincenzo is still in there."

"No problem, I'll just roust him out."

Pooch started to say something to Sonny as he pushed past him into the bathroom, but Aiuppo called him into the living room. Sonny closed the door behind him. "Hey, you use up all the hot water, I'm gonna brain you. You've been in there at least half an hour. C'm'on! Out!" He pulled back the shower curtain.

Sonny had been prepared for the emaciation. What shocked him were the scars on Vinnie's chest—vivid, angry cuts that hadn't been made by his abductors; the scars weren't old enough. _He did this to himself. What for?_ Sonny touched the wet skin cautiously. "What happened?" He whispered it, as though it were a secret accident, a hit-and-run.

"I tried," Vinnie whispered back. "But they stopped me."

It occurred to Sonny just what a lucky thing it was Vinnie had been so weak for so long. If he hadn't been, there was no way Pooch and Aiuppo could have stopped him from doing anything he really wanted to do. _Maybe that's why the old man's so anxious. You still don't know you got your strength back, but when you do . . . ._ They wouldn't leave it at just some drugs; there'd be restraints, confinement—

"C'm'on, quit wasting the hot water and get out of there," Sonny ordered. Vinnie complied, and Sonny stripped off his clothes and got in the hot shower.

He couldn't get a handle on this pliant stranger who was supposed to be his Vinnie. He seemed filled with a pain and confusion that was eating him alive. _What the hell happened?_ "Tell me about the bridge," he said over the sound of the shower.

"What about it?"

"C'm'on, you were talking about jumping off a bridge. When was this?"

"I'm not sure. A while ago. I have a hard time remembering things in the morning."

"Yeah, well, guess what? It's not morning, it's twelve-thirty in the afternoon." Sonny stuck his head under the shower, blotting out anything Vinnie might be saying. When he emerged, he found the shower curtain pulled back some, Vinnie looking at him with dazed puzzlement. He'd seen those eyes look more alert when he was half asleep.

"I can't have been in here that long," he said slowly. "Because the hot water hasn't run out."

"We were up late talking, so you got up late. No big deal. Did you get breakfast?"

Vinnie shook his head. "I took the pills. Then I came in here. I don't understand what you're doing here; I never see you after the pills have kicked in, only when they start to wear off."

"Maybe you should talk to the shrink about it," Sonny suggested.

Vinnie threw the curtain closed. "I am not talking to that fat toad again!" The anger was sluggish, damped down, but it was real. "Self-righteous son-of-a bitch—shit, with my luck, he'd be on your side."

"Hey, you don't like that guy, get somebody else. The Yellow Pages're full of 'em."

"They're all the same guy, Sonny. I've talked to a bunch of them and they're all the same guy. You have to take all these tests, to be sure you won't crack doing undercover work, go nuts, or just not come home again. Frank said . . . ." Vinnie stopped, apparently unable to remember what Frank had said. "Something is not right." This was said to himself.

"Yeah? What's wrong?"

Vinnie didn't answer, just frowned at him.

"While you think about it, brush your teeth, shave, and get some clothes on."

The water he stood under was getting cooler; Sonny kept turning down the cold tap, draining the dregs from the water heater. He needed time to think, but there was no place for solitude in this house. It was just like when he was growing up. He'd spent a lot of time locked in the privacy of the bathroom then, too, until Dave had moved out and left him with a room to himself.

 _Aiuppo's worried about being fair?_ The idea made Sonny laugh. _That was saving face, not having to admit I'm all he's got unless he wants to send Vinnie someplace with soft walls._ That was a chilling thought, but Sonny didn't let it bother him. It wasn't going to happen; he wasn't going to let it. _Why does it matter so much?_ Sonny ignored the question; he didn't have an answer and he didn't have time to find one. _Vinnie said, "Killing you wasn't my job." What was that supposed to mean? He didn't mean it literally; Vinnie couldn't—_ Sonny pushed the thought away. _Gotta snap him out of this._

When he finally emerged from the shower, Vinnie was gone, nothing but a heap of wet towels to show he'd ever been there. Sonny shaved, brushed his teeth, then wrapped a towel around his waist and went back to Vinnie's bedroom to put on clean clothes.

Vinnie was sprawled on his bed, sound asleep. That should have given Sonny the solitude he craved, but Vinnie's presence, especially unconscious, made him itchy. Vinnie unconscious could be the Vinnie he remembered, and the loony urge to wake him—just to see if he'd be himself when he opened his eyes—wouldn't leave Sonny's mind. It was same sort of stupid, irresistible impulse that made him keep checking the same pocket for the keys that hadn't been there an instant ago, and that he knew hadn't reappeared by magic. Sonny watched Vinnie for a few minutes, then he left the room.

 _Gotta get outta here for a while. Go someplace to think._ He started for the living room, but he heard Pooch's voice and stopped to eavesdrop.

"I still think we should've called Amber. The kid was really nuts about her, I bet she could shake him up."

"I did what the doctor advised, and I'm not ready to give up just yet. Maybe Salvatore can still accomplish what we need." His voice didn't hold much hope.

"He was real insistent he was going out yesterday, but he wouldn't tell me  
where he wanted to go, or how he was going to get there."

"Did you tell him his car was gone?" Aiuppo asked, and Sonny grinned at the note of suspicion he heard.

"No, of course not. Why, you think he knows?"

"He knows. He told Salvatore." They were quiet a moment, then Aiuppo went on. "From what the doctor said, it shouldn't have taken even this long. He seemed to believe that Salvatore's presence would shock Vincenzo out of his delusional state. That didn't happen. He needs help of a nature I don't understand. There doesn't seem to be any way I can get close to him." The last words were said with a quiet wistfulness.

"What're you gonna do?" Pooch asked.

"Perhaps it would be better if Vincenzo went on believing Salvatore was dead, and we found a doctor who could help him with his guilt."

Sonny felt a rage tightening around his heart.

"If things aren't better in another two days, I'm going to call Frank McPike. If nothing else, I'm sure he has Vincenzo's best interests at heart."

"What about . . . ?" From the distasteful way Pooch didn't say his name, Sonny was sure he was talking about him. "What if he won't just go away?"

_Better fucking believe I won't just go away._

"Salvatore is not stupid. When he sees how things are, I doubt very much he will present a problem. If he does, I'm sure Frank will take care of him, for Vincenzo's sake."

Quietly Sonny went back to Vinnie's room and closed the door. Vinnie was still asleep, snoring again. Those pills really did a number on him. Sonny was going to have to keep those old men from doping him up again.

Sonny lay down on Pete's bed, on his stomach so he could look at Vinnie. "You in there?" he whispered to Vinnie, who snored at him. "Yeah. What's this thing with you an' McPike, huh? Aiuppo thinks he'll kill me for you, is that right?" Sonny sighed. "If I had a brain in my head, I'd pack my stuff, say goodbye to Aiuppo, and get on a plane to someplace he's never heard of, and I'd never think about you again, just like I haven't been thinking about you all these years." Vinnie shifted a little, and without meaning to Sonny reached over and stroked his cheek. "You wanna stay here? Pretend I'm dead? And I'll pretend you're dead. You can get back with this Amber, pal around with McPike, and live happily ever after. Hell, maybe that would be the best thing for both of us. Be a lot easier to believe if you weren't such a fucking mess, though."

"Why're you whispering?" Vinnie whispered.

"Don't wanna be overheard. You want Aiuppo to have McPike dust me?"

Sonny wasn't sure what he thought Vinnie would say, but Vinnie didn't say anything, he just busted out laughing. "That's why I missed you," Vinnie said when he'd pretty much stopped laughing. "Nobody but you would ever ask anything that nuts."

Sonny didn't know why the question was nuts. Was it because Vinnie wouldn't want him dusted, or because he didn't think McPike would do it? Or, was it maybe something else? Vinnie was no help, he was asleep again, and he'd turned over on his stomach.

Aiuppo's words actually relieved Sonny. He'd known he was being rushed, but there had been an ambiguity about it. Now the threat was clear, sharp—and he had a deadline. All he needed was a plan.

He'd been thinking about it for nearly an hour, working out the details, when Vinnie woke up. "Time is it?"

Sonny checked his watch. "Two-thirty, almost."

"In the afternoon." It wasn't a question, really; Vinnie was just orienting himself.

"Yeah, in the afternoon."

Vinnie yawned, sat up, stretched, and cracked his back. "You got a cigarette?"

"No, sorry."

"Yeah, I guess that'd be too much to ask for. So, what's it like here?" __

_What's it like here?_ "It's your house, how come you don't know what it's like here?"

"Yeah, it looks like my house, only there's no way out. That was the name of something, wasn't it?"

"What's the name of something?"

"Beckett was waiting for Godot, Sartre was _No Exit,_ but there was something called _No Way Out._ "

There was an urgency to Vinnie's voice that Sonny hadn't heard before. But Sonny didn't know why he was urgent about there being no way of getting out of his house.

The door was opened with parental abruptness. "This door is to stay open," Aiuppo said. Sonny wanted to say something, something about how they hadn't been **doing** anything, but saying you weren't doing anything was admitting something, even if it wasn't what you were being accused of; it was admitting you felt guilty even if you didn't. Sonny felt more than accused, he felt rebuked, like a teenager who couldn't keep his hands to himself.

Vinnie didn't seem to feel anything but pissed off. The second Aiuppo was gone, he was off his bed, tripping his way across the room and slamming the door. When it opened again a moment later, he was still standing there, confrontational and pissed off. **"What?"** he yelled, practically into Aiuppo's face. "Huh? What? You don't let me leave, you don't let me—I can't have any privacy anymore? Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? This is **my** goddamned house, my mother gave it to me, so just because she married you, that doesn't make you king of the castle! I don't even know why I gotta sleep in here, in this little bed—in case you didn't notice, I moved my stuff over to the big bedroom, so who do you think you are—"

"Vincenzo," Rudy said, trying to calm him down, "Vincenzo," but Vinnie was ready to swing on him, Sonny could see it in his stance. He got up and grabbed Vinnie's arm.

"C'm'on, cut it out, you can't hit him."

Vinnie punched Sonny in the mouth.

"You feel better now?" Sonny asked. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.

"Shut up, you're not even here." He turned his attention back to Rudy. "You stay out of my room. What do you care what I do alone in my room, as long as you don't gotta take my dead body home to my mother? You're not my father! It's none of your business what I do in here! And from now on you **knock** before you come in my room!" And he slammed the door again, which was a relief to Sonny, since he was the one Aiuppo had been looking at.

"So now what?" Sonny asked.

"Now what. Now what **what,** huh? Maybe we should set the house on fire."

Sonny had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He sat back down on the bed. "You got any matches?"

"No." Vinnie leaned against the door. "I feel like I'm in prison again!" he yelled suddenly, banging his fists against the door. "The only good thing is, I don't gotta watch my back."

"Nobody shut you in here, you know," Sonny said. "You could go out in the living room and—"

"And what?" Vinnie asked, challenging Sonny to—what? "Huh? And sit around with Rudy and Pooch lookin' at me like they can see my marbles dropping outta my head an' rolling across the floor? Pooch all the time looks like he's about to wrestle me to the floor—I swear, he tried to take a **potato chip** away from me the other day! You think I could kill myself with a potato chip?"

"I kind'a doubt it." He didn't really want to go out there either, and he also didn't like the way Pooch and Aiuppo looked at him.

"Yeah, me too. And what's the point now, anyway? We're all dead—maybe the house did burn down, that'd explain everything, right?"

"We're not dead," Sonny said perfunctorily. "I wasn't dead before and I'm sure not now."

"Uh-huh. You just keep telling yourself that."

His skepticism was irritating Sonny. "Nobody's dead! You just thought I was dead, and you've been sick, so—" Sonny stopped, no idea what to say next. "Your stepfather brought me here to see you."

"Yeah, sure, that's just like him. He's always bringing old friends of mine around, especially dead ones. He worries about me being lonely."

"He worries about you killing yourself," Sonny corrected. "You've tried how many times now?"

"Don't pretend you don't know, it was your idea in the first place!" And before Sonny could respond, Vinnie said, "This isn't anything like a dream."

"I got news for you—it's nothing like a dream for me, either."

"No, I mean—my knuckles are bleeding from where I hit you."

"My **mouth** is bleeding from where you hit me. Wha'd you expect?"

"Before it was like a game. Not a very nice one—you were always pissed at me, or—only now you seem—did you kiss me before?"

"Shut up," Sonny said.

"Yeah. An' this isn't one'a **those** dreams, either, so it's not a dream."

"Glad you got that worked out," Sonny muttered. He wanted to get up off this little bed and pace but the room wasn't big enough. He hated this claustrophobic little house. If he did get up and start pacing it would look ridiculous and it wouldn't really make him feel better. Better not to get up at all, so he lay there trying not to be tense. He wasn't having much luck. “This isn't a dream. Write it down, why don't you?”

"Just shut up, will you? You never say anything useful."

For some reason that stung. "Useful? Like what?"

"Like you never explain anything to me I wanna know."

"Like what do you wanna know?" Sonny asked. "Will you sit down? It's straining my neck looking at you."

Vinnie lay down on his bed, arms folded behind his head. "Like how you managed to be so smart and so stupid at the same time. You asked me that once, you remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. What're you talking about?"

"What did I hafta do before you caught on I was a cop? Paint a sign on my forehead? Jesus, Sonny, there were so many times—you remember the waiter I chewed out for getting my breakfast order wrong?"

"Waiter?” Sonny was lost. "What?"

"It was Frank."

"What? What're you talking about?"

"Morning after you took me for a ride, trying to scare me—an' yeah, I was at Quantico for training. Good deal you brought that up or Mel Profitt would'a had Roger drop-kick me off the boat someplace in the middle of the ocean."

"Vinnie, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"Shut up, you don't get to be impatient when you're living in my head. You don't like it here, go someplace else."

“I am not living in your head!” Sonny yelled at him. “Will you quit saying that?” 

“Yeah, right,” Vinnie said. “We're really on the French Riviera, only we got a really bad hotel room.” In a moment he resumed whatever he'd been talking about before. "You do remember that ride, right? After you had my apartment searched?"

"Yeah, I remember that," Sonny said.

"Yeah, that morning you came to take me out for breakfast an' there was a guy in my room, wearing a waiter's uniform."

"Yeah, so? You used to order room service all the time."

"Yeah, but that guy wasn't a waiter. That guy was Frank, who practically had heart failure when you showed up. I wasn't doing so good myself either."

It wasn't that Sonny couldn't remember going to Vinnie's apartment and finding a guy from room service there, it was that he couldn't distinguish one particular time from the multitude. Except for a certain satisfaction that he'd scared the socks off Frank McPike, Sonny didn't get the point of this story. "What're you telling me this for?"

"Because you should'a caught on! You had an OCB field director standing practically under your nose and you didn't even notice! How can somebody as smart as you be so fucking stupid?"

There was no knock at the door, it just opened again and Aiuppo was there, again. "Is everything all right in here?"

"Well, he doesn't have his hand down my pants, if that's what you mean," Vinnie muttered. "What do you want, anyway? To tell us if we don't play nice, Sonny'll have to go home? Since he lives in my head, I dunno what kind'a threat that is! Why don't you just go away—"

"Everything's fine," Sonny said stoically, or maybe not so stoically, but he was trying to stay stoic, unemotional, in spite of the humiliation the flooded him every time Aiuppo came into the room. "Everything is just fine." He was going to wait until Aiuppo was gone, then he was going to hold Vinnie's pillow over his head until he either shut up or died, whichever came first.

Rudy gave them the patented parental look of warning, then closed the door.

"OK, so I didn't pay close enough attention to your room service waiter!" Sonny exploded. "And if you ever say anything like that again, I'm gonna kill you. You understand me?"

"Little late for that isn't it, Buckwheat? Anyhow, I really don't think that in the long list of reasons for us to be here, you not being able to keep your tongue out of my mouth—I don't think it's even on the list, so don't sweat  
it."

Sonny wasn't going to argue the dead thing again, and he certainly wasn't going to talk about—any of the rest of what Vinnie had said. But he needed Vinnie to shut up about it. "You think I'm kidding? Your stepfather already thinks I'm a— What is the matter with you?"

"The matter with me? You're the one keeps looking at me like that. And who cares what he thinks?"

Sonny did, but he wasn't going to tell Vinnie that—and what the hell was the matter with him anyway, there was nothing wrong with the way Sonny was looking at him. "An' I don't know what you're so pissed off about! Did you **want** me to find out you were a cop?"

"Yes! No, but—yes!"

"No, but yes, what kind'a answer's **that?"**

"Of course I didn't want you to find out! I knew what would'a happened if you had, only—what was happening with you **not** finding out was bad, too! I hated what I was doing to you, I knew it was wrong—only it **wasn't** wrong, it was—"

"Cut it out," Sonny said tiredly. He was beginning to see why they kept Vinnie drugged up all the time—it shut him up. He lay down on his back and stared at the ceiling.

Vinnie was quiet for a minute. "After it was over an' I realized it didn't matter which one'a us was dead, I was mad at you for not figuring out—who did you think I was, anyway?"

Sonny closed his eyes. "I thought you were who you said you were," he said after a while.

"You bought every damn line I threw at you! Didn't matter how ridiculous they were, didn't matter how— Jesus, Sonny, Frank was goin' crazy, trying to figure out how to keep the cops from coming down hard on us— You blew up a fucking elevator and they didn't even—nothin' happened! Frank kept tellin' me you were gonna see through me any day, an' I **knew** he was wrong, you weren't, because—I don't know why! That's what I want you to tell me!"

The door opened again. Rudy was there, with Pooch. "I don't know what's going on in here—"

"Yeah, that's right, you don't an' you don't need to," Vinnie said. He was on his feet again, going to stare Aiuppo down.

"—but I'm afraid you're becoming too emotional—"

"It's none'a your fucking business how emotional I get! What do you care, if I wanna— Who are you, the warden of this place? Is this what purgatory is, trapped in my old room with a ghost, an' you comin' in every five minutes to tell me to quiet down or—or what, huh? You're not God, so you can't send me to heaven or hell, so **what?** What do you think you can do to me?"

"Vinnie, sit down and shut up," Sonny said. The look on Aiuppo's face when Vinnie did it was pretty hilarious, but Sonny didn't laugh. He had the feeling that was exactly why Vinnie had done it. Damned if he was going to do what his stepfather told him to, but Sonny? If it pissed off Aiuppo, yeah, sure.

Still, Aiuppo had gotten what he wanted. "I don't want to hear any more of these outbursts," he said, and he was talking to Sonny.

"Maybe we should stuff some cotton in your ears," Vinnie muttered. "Then you won't be able to hear anything—"

"There are the neighbors to consider," Aiuppo went on more stiffly, ignoring Vinnie. "Unless you don't care about them knowing who's staying here."

Sonny was getting tired of this. He stood up and went over to Aiuppo, said quietly, "You know, you're not helping matters. He's only gets really loud when you come in, so why don't you quit coming in? You brought me here to talk to him and that's what I'm doing." The way Aiuppo was looking at him made Sonny want to smack him one—or crawl under the bed—but he didn't break eye contact. "Unless you want me to leave right now," he added. "You think that'll solve things, I'll go."

Sonny had always known that anybody could be bluffed, if the thing they were betting on was important enough to them. Vinnie was important enough to Aiuppo. "No," he said firmly. "I would rather you not leave yet."

"Then maybe you should stop treating us like a couple'a unruly teenagers. It's not like we're gonna burn the house down." Behind him he heard Vinnie laugh.

Unwillingly, Aiuppo nodded. "All right. But please try to remember we have neighbors."

"Mrs. Arnsteen still live next door?" Vinnie asked, motioning vaguely to the house his windows faced.

"I believe so, yes," Rudy said, and looked at Pooch, who confirmed this with a nod.

"You don't gotta worry about her, she's deaf as a post. When we set the house on fire, she won't hear the fire trucks that pull up to put it out. Hell, she won't even hear it when the elevator blows up!"

Aiuppo looked disturbed, and Sonny could understand why—he had no idea what Vinnie was talking about. He started to say something, then shook his head. "Come with me," he said to Sonny.

"Uh-oh, you're in trouble now," Vinnie said, and started laughing.

Sonny left the room with Aiuppo, Pooch staying behind with Vinnie. Sonny could hear them arguing about Vinnie taking his pills.

"What do you think you're doing?" Aiuppo asked when they got to the living room.

"I think I'm doing what you brought me here to do, only you're making it impossible," Sonny shot back at him. And then, before Aiuppo could go after him, "What's the big deal with the door, huh? What exactly are you afraid's gonna happen if we have the door shut?"

"I believe you know the answer to that question," Aiuppo said, and if he was being discreet, he was also being more than a little threatening.

"Vinnie's mind is all fucked up," Sonny said with exaggerated patience. "Between the drugs, and whatever they did to him over there, and being sick, and whatever's wrong between the two of you, and knowing his friends think he's dead—"

"And just how does he know that?" Aiuppo asked.

"He found a Mass card with his picture on it. He's not stupid, you know, he searches your pockets when you're not looking. And now you've got him locked up here—he doesn't like being locked up. He's not thinking clearly. But you— He's nuts, but he's the one you're listening to, which makes me think his story is the one you want to hear, whether it's true or not." _That sounded pretty good,_ Sonny thought, and pushed it a little more. "Which, I don't care, you believe him if you want to, doesn't matter. Except you're the one who put me in that room with him. So if you don't want me there, then maybe you can tell me where I'm supposed to be instead. And you playing patriarch just makes things worse because whatever's wrong between the two of you, he's fucking furious about it. If you say jump, he says go fuck yourself, and sits on the floor. You wanted the door open? You should have locked it shut, he'd've knocked it down. I'm starting to wonder how you got the reputation for being so smart." Sonny pushed past him and went back the dark little hall to Vinnie's room.

Vinnie was lying on his bed with his pillow over his head, ignoring Pooch, who was trying to talk him into taking his pills.

"You giving him these because it's time he take them, or because he's been yelling?" Sonny asked. "Because he's gonna quit yelling."

"The don says—"

"The don can—" Sonny didn't finish his sentence, he just shoved Pooch out of the room and closed the door in his face.

"Yeah, the don can what?" Vinnie asked from under his pillow.

Sonny ignored that and took the pillow away from him. "You gotta be more quiet," he said. "You wanna talk, we'll talk."

"You never answered my question."

"What question?" Sonny sat back down on the bed. All this inactivity was beginning to bother him. It looked like it was starting to get dark out, but maybe that was just rain.

"Who— Why did you believe me?"

"Why **wouldn't** I believe you?" Sonny countered, which wasn't an answer.

And which Vinnie pointed out. "I really wanna know. It's been—I've never been able to figure it out. You just—you just bought me, right from the beginning. I don't mean like bought and paid for, I mean you just—you bought the line, whatever it was, an' I don't know **why."** He was struggling to keep from raising his voice, which was a very good sign. He had some control, and he was doing what Sonny had told him to do.

But Sonny wished he'd shut up. He didn't like this question, he didn't want to think about it, let alone try to come up with an answer that Vinnie would accept.

"What was it about me that—I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't **get** it." He took his pillow back from Sonny, put it over his face, and yelled into it, **"I don't get it!"**

Sonny took the pillow back. "All right, all right, just—stop doing that. It's not that complicated. I liked you."

Vinnie sat up, looking at him, squinting as though he were very far away instead of less than an arm's length from him. "You liked me? That was it?"

Sonny shifted, wanted to look away, but he wouldn't let himself. "Yeah. Well, I thought you knew that."

"Knew that you liked me. Yeah, I knew that. But— You **liked** me? Really, that's it?"

"What kind'a answer were you looking for?" Sonny asked.

"I don't—I don't know! I don't—I—fuck, maybe you had a brain tumor or something—"

"Jesus, before I was dead, now I got a brain tumor. Thanks a lot, pal."

"It's not just me, you know," Vinnie said darkly. "I'm not the only one."

"You're not the only one what?" Sonny asked. He felt like half the time Vinnie wasn't really talking to him, like he was playing to an audience that existed only in his head. Of course, he thought Sonny existed only in his head, so maybe that made sense.

"What about Chuke?" Vinnie asked.

"What **about** Chuke? Will you stop talking in riddles?" Sonny was about ready to hit him.

"You didn't know he was a junkie."

Sonny was annoyed. "I know I didn't know he was a junkie! **You're** not the one who told me—"

"No, I mean— He was your friend, right?"

"Yeah, sure, he was—" Sonny thought about it. He wouldn't really have called Chuke a friend, but he had liked him, and he thought that was what Vinnie meant. "Yeah, I guess we were friends. Why?" Sonny didn't know what Vinnie was talking about, or why he was comparing himself to Chuke.

 **"You** got a blind spot," Vinnie said. "I was just standing in it. It's got nothin' to do with me, you just— You couldn't see me, you could only see—"

"What about you?" Sonny interrupted. He was fed up with Vinnie telling him how stupid he'd been. "You knew it was all a lie, but you still got too close. How smart does that make you?"

"I was lonely," Vinnie said, and it was an explanation, not an excuse. "My family wasn't talking to me. I couldn't stand Frank. I didn't know my Uncle Mike—"

"You didn't know your Uncle Mike?" Sonny asked, once again not understanding what he was talking about.

"He wasn't really my uncle," Vinnie said. "He was my lifeguard, my contact. I had to call him every day, twice a day if Frank was feeling insecure."

That Vinnie's Uncle Mike hadn't really been his uncle, that he'd been nothing more than another fed, had never occurred to Sonny. He didn't really want to think about this latest bit of evidence of how stupid he'd been. "What were you saying?"

"That I fell hard for you because I really liked you and because we just clicked."

The words were nice, but it didn't seem to be making Vinnie very happy to say them. "Do me a favor and shut up," Sonny said, and he hit Vinnie with his pillow.

Vinnie laughed. "So, you wanna play cards? Or how about _Clue,_ I think I got that one."

"Yeah, as I remember, you cheat at cards. And I'm sure not playing _Clue_ with you—I'm not stupid enough to play against a pro."

"Hey, you never proved I was cheating," Vinnie said. He was still laughing. "And you still owe me three hundred and forty-seven cents."

"Jesus, you remember down to the last penny." Sonny took out his wallet, pulled out a twenty, tossed it at Vinnie. "Keep the change."

The twenty fluttered to the floor. Vinnie didn't even lean over to pick it up.

"OK, you don't trust me at cards, and you won't play the house's game. So how about Monopoly—that's your game, right?"

Sonny was bored by board games, but it was still better than lying on Pete Terranova's old bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about pacing.

They played until dinnertime, and Sonny was way ahead, which for some reason Vinnie found amusing. Sonny didn't know or care why; he just liked seeing Vinnie smiling. What Sonny found amusing was that Vinnie kept landing in jail, just like old times.

Dinner put an end to the game. Pooch gave Vinnie his drugs, and by the time the meal was over, Vinnie was yawning. They went back to his room and Vinnie crawled back into bed. "If I'm really not dead, someday these pills're gonna  
make you disappear," Vinnie said. "When that happens, I'm gonna miss you again."

"Shut up," Sonny said, and turned out the light.

 

Once again he was lying in the dark listening to Vinnie snore, only tonight Sonny was making plans. Normally he'd be annoyed at having to go to bed so early, but tonight it was fine. He had a lot to do and he needed to get up early so he'd have plenty of time.

What Sonny was about to do wasn't just stupid, it was dangerous too, dangerous and irredeemably stupid. If it went wrong, the repercussions could be bad, not just for him, but for Tracy and even for Vinnie. Before he did anything, he needed to make sure Tracy would be safe. When he'd first come back into her life, Sonny had given Tracy ten thousand dollars to hold for him. That was the story he'd told her, anyway. The truth was, the money was for her, in case of an emergency. One thing Sonny was very careful about was the availability of his money. As long as he could get to an ATM, he was safe, money-wise. 

 

Aiuppo made no objection when after breakfast Sonny said he was going out for a while. He offered use of the rental, and only said (very mildly) that they'd be eating dinner at seven. Sonny smilingly assured him that he'd be back in plenty of time.

He walked to the subway instead of taking the rental. The rental would have gotten him to the Bronx faster, but it would have complicated things later on.

Sonny hadn't missed the subway a bit. But there was one moment when the train came out of its tunnel and Sonny could see the Empire State Building. He nearly got off at the very next stop, but this wasn't where he needed to be, not yet.

Driving back into the city made him feel like a kid again, like the first time he ever made this drive, when he'd borrowed his father's car without permission. He'd been grounded for months afterward, which wasn't all that important, since he'd always been able to sneak out.

He found a parking garage, one not too close to his destination, because he was back in Manhattan and Sonny needed to walk in it. He loved this city so much, it was utterly irresistible to him. Manhattan was the one thing he'd really missed, and the anonymity of its size made it reasonably safe for him to walk here.

The day was overcast, threatening rain, and that was good. What was even better was that New Yorkers didn't go sight-seeing; he was one of the few natives he knew who had ever been to the top of the Empire State Building, let alone gone more than once. And Vinnie was the only one he'd ever told he'd done that.

The view that day was unimpressive. It was more spooky gothic than cosmopolitan panorama, and the skyscrapers loomed out of the fog like castle spires. He couldn't see the city, but Sonny didn't care. He loved this view under any circumstance, had seen it at every available time of day, in every weather. It was his.

And so was Vinnie. He hadn't been sure of that before, he'd thought it was just wishful thinking. But Vinnie was his.

_Yeah? Even if it's true, so what? Look at him, he can barely tie his shoes by himself—_

_Sure, they've got him all drugged up. Get him off that junk, he'll be fine—_

_Fine? He doesn't just think you're dead, he thinks **he's** dead, he's throwing temper-tantrums. That's fine? _

No. It wasn't anywhere near fine. And it didn't matter. Broken or not, Vinnie was **his.** In the end, that was all there was to it. When had Sonny Steelgrave ever given up something that belonged to him? _Never, not without a fight._ And if he did have to lose Vinnie, well, it wasn't going to be to the feds. They'd taken everything else, they'd broken Vinnie in the first place, or at least failed to protect him— _not a fucking clue how to protect their own—well, he's not theirs anyway, not anymore. He's mine, I'm keeping him, that's that._

Aiuppo would object. That did worry Sonny. He didn't know how he could fight Aiuppo now.

_Now? You think there was ever a time you could'a taken on Rudy Aiuppo? What  
kind'a drugs have **you** been taking? OK, I can't fight Aiuppo, but maybe I don't have to. I can be invisible—he doesn't even know what name I'm using. _

"I'm out of my mind," Sonny said. "I'm out of my fucking mind. Aiuppo's got enough connections to find me after I was dead, to buy off a death squad, and if that wasn't quite enough, he's got connections with the feds, or former feds, or whatever McPike is now. Anybody else I can piss off?"

_So what? I'll have Vinnie._

He went in search of a pay phone and dialed Tracy's office number. Her secretary wanted to put him on hold, or take his number, but neither of those options were workable. "Tell her it's an emergency," he ordered. "I need to talk to her now."

"Are you all right?" Tracy asked in lieu of a greeting.

"Fine, Princess. We just need to talk, and I'm at a pay phone, and I don't have time to waste. I'm not sure when you can expect me home."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to try to come home. If that doesn't work out, I'll stay in touch. If Aiuppo calls, you haven't heard from me since I left."

"Why would he be calling? What's happened?" Her voice was cool, detached; any fear she was feeling was frozen out.

"Sweetheart, I don't have time to get into it all. What I want you to do is get every dime you can get your hands on and put it in a place you can get to any time of the day or night." He closed his eyes, wishing he didn't have to say this. "Do you have a way of getting a fake I.D.?"

"I—what?" When he started to repeat himself, she interrupted him. "Yes, I think so, but why would I need a fake I.D.?"

"I want you to be able to disappear if you have to, if things go bad."

 **"What** things?" Tracy insisted. "What is going on? Is Mr. Aiuppo reneging on his guarantee of your safety?"

"Not yet," Sonny said, "but by the time this is over—" He cut himself off. "That's not important. What I'm worried about is, I made him promise to leave you alone, but after tonight, all bets are off."

"What do you mean, 'after tonight'? What's happening tonight?"

"It's complicated," Sonny temporized, suddenly wondering if her phone might be tapped. He was pretty sure the answer was no. The feds didn't know he was alive, so they had no reason to want to listen in on Tracy's phone conversations. Aiuppo might've considered it, and he might do it in the future, but for now, probably not. In a way it didn't matter; Sonny wasn't going to be telling Tracy anything that would help Aiuppo or the feds or anybody else. If Aiuppo was listening, the only thing he'd find out was that Sonny had called Tracy.

"I'm not stupid," Tracy said, her voice brittle. "I can understand complex matters."

"I don't have time," Sonny said. He wasn't going to tell her what he was going to do, and not because of possible bugs but because he knew if he did, she'd start asking perfectly reasonable questions and they'd end up shouting at each other.

"I don't believe that," Tracy said grimly. "Are you not telling me because you think I can't handle it? If I'm in some kind of danger, don't you think I have a right to know why?" She took a deep breath, seemed to switch gears, and when she spoke again her voice was fierce and impatient. "If we're going to war, you can't keep treating me like a child."

For a second he was overwhelmed, emotions and memories rushing at him so fast he wasn't even sure what he was feeling. What emerged most strongly was an edge her voice held, a keyed-up enthusiasm he'd heard his whole life in his brother's voice. Dave had liked nothing more than a good fight. "I know you're not a child, but there are things that just aren't any of your business."

She was quiet after that, but only for a minute. "You're leaving tonight?"

"Yeah. Sometime after midnight."

"Where are you now?"

"Midtown." No reason to be more specific.

"Where are you going now?"

"Tracy, I got stuff I gotta do."

"All right, just—call me before you go back to the house. I'm going to send Lucille home, then see about getting a cell phone that's not in my name. Call me so I can give you the number."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll call you back. But don't send her home and don't do anything out of the ordinary. Just make sure she puts my calls through."

"Don't worry, I've already told her that." She gave a short, slightly embarrassed laugh. "She thinks you're my boyfriend. She also thinks you're demanding, unreasonable, and probably married. She doesn't think much of you."

Sonny heard himself laughing that same embarrassed laugh.

"I haven't told her anything different since I thought it made a good cover."

"Yeah, yeah, if anybody comes asking, she'll tell 'em that, and she'll be convincing. Look, I gotta go now."

"You'll call me back?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll call you."

He heard her say she loved him before he hung up.

Sonny walked around the observation deck again. The fog had deepened—it was like standing inside a cloud. Sonny shivered. He really needed to get a warm coat, and some things for Vinnie. He'd need a warm coat, too, and jeans in the right size. Either Aiuppo and Pooch hadn't bought him clothes that would fit, or—more likely—Vinnie wouldn't wear them. He could be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

It was as hard to get on the elevator to go back down as it was to leave a lover behind, but Sonny didn't have time to stand there all day and night, the way he used to do.

A new laptop—if he was going to be away from home for very long, Sonny would need a computer. The basics: toiletries for himself and for Vinnie. A couple of pairs of jeans that would fit Vinnie—there was no point buying him clothes he'd only argue about wearing. A couple of sweaters, socks, half a dozen pairs of the India silk boxers Sonny knew Vinnie liked, and finally a black leather jacket and wool scarf. For himself he got a short black cashmere coat, and a scarf. It was probably enough to hold them until Vinnie needed a larger size jeans. Sonny hoped by that time Vinnie would be in good enough shape so Sonny could take him shopping.

When he was finished with his shopping trip, Sonny went back to the phone he'd called Tracy from and dialed her number. He could hear the disapproval in Lucille's voice, and the relief in Tracy's.

"I've got the phone," she told him, and gave Sonny the number. "I want you to call me once a week."

Sonny nearly laughed, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings. She sounded so much like her father.

"If you don't keep in touch with me, how will I know if I'm in danger, or if the danger's over?" she asked.

That was a reasonable point. "Yeah, OK, I'll call."

"OK, good. Now, what do you need me to do?"

Sonny loved her calm determination. "Nothing, Princess, I'm all set."

"Then tell me what I can expect."

Yeah, she did have a right to know that. "If you get any calls about me, from anyone, here's what you do. If it's anybody but Aiuppo—the man himself, not someone calling using his name—you don't know what they're talking about, what kind of sick joke are they trying to pull—you got that?"

"Yes, I've got it, but—"

"If they say they're calling for Aiuppo, you tell them to put him on the phone, and if they can't, hang up. If they do, or if it's Aiuppo himself who calls. . . ." Sonny had been giving it a lot of thought, but neither of the responses he'd come up with seemed quite right. "Go on the offensive," he said quickly, before Tracy could start asking questions again. "Demand to know where I am, say we acted in good faith—cry, if you think it'll help. Do whatever you have to do to make him think he's scaring you, that you don't know anything. You got that?"

"Yes! But why would anybody be calling about you—and who else would be calling, if not Mr. Aiuppo?"

"I dunno. Could be the feds. If it is, if he's told 'em about me, let him try and prove I'm alive."

"Uncle Sonny, what's going on?"

"Don't worry about it, I got it covered."

She was quiet for a moment. "I hope you know what you're doing." She said it just like her father always had, her voice full of reservations. "Now what?" Her voice had shifted back to brisk, business-like efficiency.

"We're going tonight, so I'd say you can expect a call by late tomorrow morning if one's going to come at all. Check yourself into a hotel, pay cash, sign a fake name and check your answering machine. Stay there 'til you hear from me, it shouldn't be more than a couple days."

"I'll tell Lucille I'm taking a few days off. My mother—"

"Don't worry, sweetheart, he's not going to contact your mother." Sonny hoped that was true, but even if it wasn't, Rita believed he was dead, and that's what she'd say.

"All right. Please be careful."

"Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm always careful."

He heard her laughing as she hung up the phone.

 

Dinner was tense and unpleasant, but it accomplished everything Sonny needed it to. Before Vinnie staggered to the table, Pooch went to lay out his pills and Sonny asked Aiuppo just how he was supposed to get through to Vinnie when they were keeping him stoned most of the time. It pissed Pooch off, but Aiuppo explained, with great patience, that they needed to keep Vinnie cooperative. "You saw how he was yesterday."

"Yeah, he was yelling at you," Sonny agreed. "Me, he was talking to." He gave them a smile. "I can keep Vinnie in line, and I don't need drugs to do it. So why don't you just leave him be? You wanna see how he is without the drugs, right? And you're gonna have to stop giving 'em to him sometime, if you ever want to get Vinnie back."

As if to illustrate Sonny's point, Vinnie came to the table, nearly falling into his chair. Aiuppo told Pooch to put the pills away.

Sonny tried to engage Vinnie in conversation but Vinnie just ate and ignored him. Finally, Sonny gave up and they ate in silence. When Aiuppo reached out to touch Vinnie, his hand was slapped away. 

"Leave me alone, all of you!"

Aiuppo seemed to hold Sonny to blame for this hostility, but Sonny didn't care. He just had to get through the evening.

After he'd eaten everything in sight, Vinnie pushed his chair back from the table. He didn't speak to any of them, or look at them, just got up and left the room. Sonny excused himself and followed him to the bedroom.

"Did you sleep all day?" Sonny asked. Vinnie lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, ignoring him. "Yeah, fine, don't talk to me. I'm not here anyway, right?" He watched Vinnie lying there, rubbing his hand distractedly across his chest. _What did you do to yourself?_ Sonny pulled his suitcase out from under the bed and finished repacking it. He locked the suitcase and slid it back under the bed, then he slipped off his shoes and lay down on Pete's bed. He wasn't tired so much as bored out of his mind. _Get some sleep, you're gonna need it later._ He put his arm over his eyes to block out the light, tried to force himself to breathe slowly. He could hear Vinnie's breathing and the way he shifted in his bed. Sonny wouldn't let himself move or look around. He lay, not quietly, but taut. _Relax. Just relax._

 

When Sonny woke up, the room was dark, the house was quiet, and Vinnie was snoring. Sonny sat up and found he was entangled in a blanket. He pulled himself free, wondering who had covered him. He found the clock: two-forty-seven a.m. He listened to the house, but heard nothing stirring. He left the bedroom and walked softly to the bathroom, using the toilet in the dark. No one made a sound.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He went back to Vinnie's room, shut the door behind him, and pulled his suitcase out from under the bed. Vinnie had turned over onto his back. Sonny sat down on the edge of Vinnie's bed. As he leaned over to put his hand over Vinnie's mouth, Vinnie opened his eyes and grabbed his wrist. "Why are you sneaking around my room?" he whispered. "An' where's your fog machine?"

"Jesus, don't do that! You scared the hell out of me!" Sonny whispered back furiously. "C'm'on, get up. Grab your shoes. We're getting out of here."

Vinnie wasn't moving. "Yeah? Where're we going?"

"What difference does it make? We're leaving."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No, I'm not kidding! Why would I be kidding?" He pulled the car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Vinnie. "Come on, get up!"

Vinnie threw the keys back. "Hey, c'm'on, Sonny, I can't drive for you. Not dressed like this. And none'a my suits fit anymore." He yawned "Besides, you said I wasn't your driver anymore."

Sonny didn't need to see him to know Vinnie'd gone stubborn on him. "Yeah?" he whispered back. "Fine. But from now on, quit pretending it's me who's messed up your life, because I'm the only one trying to help you!" Sonny picked up his shoes and suitcase and left the room. _If he doesn't come with me, this whole escaping-into-the-night thing's gonna look pretty stupid. Aiuppo's gonna think I've lost my nerve—yeah, so what? He's already got no use for me. Let him think what he wants. He can stay the fuck out of my life._

He'd walked the three blocks to the Charger before realizing that he was still carrying his shoes and his feet were freezing. He leaned against the car to put his shoes on and there was Vinnie, following him. Vinnie leaned next to him to put on his own shoes.

"You wake anybody up?" Sonny asked.

Vinnie gave him his best God-are-you-stupid look. "What, do you think I've never snuck outta that house before?"

Sonny unlocked the car. "How fucked up are you?"

"Huh?"

Instead of repeating himself, Sonny tossed Vinnie the car keys. "I know you're not driving for me anymore, but what I want to know is, are you straight enough to drive?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"I haven't been back here in a long time. I want to sight-see while I still have a chance, even if it is dark—as long as it doesn't mean getting smashed up because you're still on another planet."

"I can drive, I can drive." He slid in behind the wheel and started the car. "Where to?"

Sonny waved a hand. "You've got the keys."

It was nice, driving through the dark; it was quiet, soothing. After a while Sonny closed his eyes.

~~~

**_A Spy in the House of Love_ **

Sonny woke up to find himself on a dark, winding road. He hadn't known where Vinnie would decide to drive, but he wasn't surprised to find they were someplace in the wilds of New Jersey, and nearly there.

Next to him, Vinnie was chuckling to himself.

"What's so funny?" Sonny asked, stretching as best he could in the confines of the car.

"All'a this. I've been trying to figure out what's happening, why we're doing this. But it all makes sense—who else would think you can just steal a car and break out of purgatory?"

"Hey!" Sonny objected, indignant. "This car's not stolen!"

"Oh, yeah? Then where'd you get it, huh?"

"I bought it! What'd you think? Cost me enough, too, I had to pay the guy twice what he paid, and pay for the license plates. I can't believe the bucks I shelled out for this piece of crap."

"Hey, pal, this's a classic you're riding in. I rebuilt the engine myself."

"Guess I should be grateful it runs at all," Sonny muttered.

"Yeah, like you know the first thing about cars."

"This's real nice, this gratitude of yours." Sonny's annoyance was real, but Vinnie being his old, pain-in-the-ass self was a relief. "I'm glad I went to the trouble."

"Yeah, thanks a lot. Where's my expensive watch and new wardrobe, in the trunk?"

"I never heard a guy so pissed off about getting presents." Sonny didn't mention that there really were new clothes in the trunk. "Would it make you happier if I gave you the kick in the ass you need instead?"

"I'd like to see you try it," Vinnie muttered. "I'd really like that." He pulled into the theatre's parking lot and shut off the engine. "This where you wanted to go?"

"Looks like it's where you wanted to go."

"They're closed up for the season; how you gonna get in?"

Something clicked in Sonny's head. "Closed for the season? Is that why the doors were locked?"

"Yeah. You didn't know that?"

"There's stuff I don't remember," Sonny admitted. He didn't know if that was one of them, or if he just hadn't known in the first place.

He got out of the car and slammed the door, walked up the steps to the back door. This was familiar, but not from the day he chased Vinnie in— _Was I chasing him? Why—?_ He knew there was something wrong with that, but the aching familiarity was stronger, and why not? Look at all the times he'd snuck in as a kid. The doors looked funny, though, askew.

"You don't think it's gonna be locked?" Vinnie was standing next to him.

"Yeah, Mick'll let us in," Sonny said absently, then realized how lost in the past he'd been. "We used to sneak in here all the time."

"We who?" Vinnie asked.

"Bunch of us. My folks sent me here summers for boxing camp, keep me outta trouble."

"Yeah, that worked out great," Vinnie cracked.

"Fuck you," Sonny muttered, and gave the door a shove. He knew Vinnie was right, it ought to be locked, and even if it wasn't, he was pushing the wrong way, but the doors fell open, surprising both of them. Sonny stepped inside the dark building, trying to remember where the light switch was located. Over in the corner, he thought, but as he turned towards it, he was thrown to the floor.

"No! You're not doing it again, not again, not again!" Vinnie had him down, was hitting him, but this was no fight, this was a child throwing a temper tantrum, pounding on whatever was handy. Sonny managed to untangle himself, turn over, and cuff Vinnie one.

"Dammit, stop it! Vinnie, cut it out!" Sonny crawled away from him, pulled himself to his feet, found the lights and flipped the switch. No lights came on, but Vinnie slugged him.

It was Sonny's tip-point; he stopped trying to think. Through the open door, the street lamp provided just enough light to find Vinnie and punch him in the mouth. "What the hell's the matter with you? We had to come all the way out here so you could find your balls, do what you've been wanting to all along?" Vinnie tried to hit him again, but Sonny blocked the blow.

"Why? Tell me that— Why did you do it?"

Sonny socked him in the eye. "Do what? What do you care anyway, huh? What difference does it make to you why I do anything?"

Vinnie hit him in the stomach, twice, knocking the wind out of him. "What do I care? I've been fucking mourning you all these years—missing you! You left me, you son-of-a-bitch! You left me behind, with no chance to tell you—"

Sonny moved in close, slamming his fist into Vinnie's face again and again as his darkest fears surfaced. "Tell me what, huh? Tell me what? That all I was to you was just another case? C'm'on, you always had an answer for everything, what's your answer to that, huh? What line'm I supposed to buy this time?"

Sonny was giving it everything he had, but instead of falling back, Vinnie was fighting back, hitting as hard as he could, and Sonny was starting to feel it. Sonny's body wanted him to go down, but he wouldn't let himself; Vinnie was not going to take him down. It was hard to believe these solid punches were being delivered by someone who looked so brittle.

"Are you out of your mind? You think caring about you was part of my job? You think I planned that?" Vinnie's punches were slacking off, and Sonny sidestepped his blows, listening to his tortured, enraged voice, wishing he could see more than outline and shadow. He wanted to look at Vinnie's face; he wanted to see the pain. "You said you'd forgive me if I gave you my heart—you said it was a traitor's heart, but I owed it to you— Dammit, I tried! I tried to cut it out, but they wouldn't let me!" Now he moved in fast, not hitting Sonny but lunging at him, taking them both down. "Do you know how much you hurt me? Do you know how much I cared about you?"

"Cared about me?" Sonny yelled, shoving Vinnie off him, pushing him down to straddle him. "Fuck cared about me! And fuck 'cared deeply' for me! You got something to say to me, why don't you just fucking say it or keep the hell outta my life?" He grabbed Vinnie's head and kissed him, kissed him, wouldn't let go until Vinnie was kissing back, until they were both gasping for air. Sonny took hold of his shoulders, shook him roughly. "Say it, dammit! Say it, or so help me this time I will kill you!"

Vinnie struggled out of his grip, then grabbed Sonny and kissed him. "I love you," he said against Sonny's cheek. "I never said it aloud. I figured you'd never leave me alone if I did—"

"And fuck leave you alone, too. Why should I leave you alone? You belong to me and it's about damn time you remembered it." Sparring with Vinnie always had gotten Sonny's blood up, but this full-out fighting was an overpowering aphrodisiac. He was so turned on, there was no way he could tear himself off Vinnie without getting some relief. He yanked down his zipper, located Vinnie's left hand, and pressed it to his crotch. Vinnie started to say something, but Sonny shut him up, kissing his stubborn mouth. He didn't give a damn whether Vinnie had been ready to protest or cooperate; he didn't want conversation, he just needed it done.

Vinnie didn't resist; he wrapped his hand lightly around Sonny's cock, teasing him for a moment before Sonny bit him. Then he laughed, and gripped tighter, his fingers doing the things he knew Sonny liked, as if it had only been yesterday that they'd done them.

Sonny basked in the attention for a moment, until curiosity drove him to find the waistband of Vinnie's jogging pants. He was about to slip his hand inside when Vinnie grabbed his wrist with his right hand, twisted away from the kiss. "Don't."

"Why not?" Sonny asked. It was difficult to form even that simple question, with what Vinnie was doing to him.

"'Cause it's a waste of time."

"Pills?"

Sonny felt a shrug. "Yeah, guess so."

Sonny grabbed his hair, made him give his mouth back for kissing. "Yeah, well, I wanna touch you," he whispered. "It's been a long time. We'll get serious about it later." He stuck his hand in Vinnie's pants, stroked his unresponsive cock, squeezed his balls, giving himself just the last bit of incentive he needed.

After the earth moved, Sonny lay with his head on Vinnie's chest, listening to the sound of his heart beating. _Something happened here,_ he thought, but no matter how hard he thought, he couldn't remember what it was. He thought of asking Vinnie, but he'd been so unpredictable, and Sonny didn't feel like another bout. He pushed himself off Vinnie and got to his feet.

Sonny looked briefly around the dark auditorium. There ought to be something there to jog his memory, to explain all this, but all he could think of was Maria finally letting him get his hand up her bra. It was a nice memory, but it wasn't any help. He started up the aisle, zipping his pants. "This place looks deserted."

"I told you, they're closed for the season."

Sonny was glad to hear Vinnie following him; he was curious, but something about the place was creeping him out, something more than the desolation of it. He stopped at the door, then gave it a slight nudge, trying to ignore the feeling that there was someone on the other side of that door, someone he didn't want to see. "It's more than that. You saw the way that door fell open."

Behind him Vinnie was looking for something and swearing under his breath. "Yeah, so? You got any cigarettes?"

Sonny inched the door open a little more, trying to see something other than dark. "No."

"Shit. First chance I've had for a smoke and you got no cigarettes."

Sonny let the door swing shut. "C'm'on, let's get out of here."

 

"The car's not stolen, dammit!" They swerved wildly as Sonny dug the pink slip out of his pocket and stuck it in Vinnie's hand. "I paid for it, I told you!"

Vinnie tossed his cigarette butt out the window, lit another, then peered at the paper in the fluctuating light from the street lamps. "This isn't your name," he said finally. "But I think it's your writing. Looks like it, anyway. You wouldn't think I'd remember that."

He offered the slip back, but Sonny shook his head. "I don't want it. We'll transfer ownership when we can."

"How can we do that when the car's not yours?" Vinnie asked.

Sonny had the feeling he was doing it on purpose. "It is mine. That's the name I live under."

"Sure it is," Vinnie agreed easily. "I believe that, too."

"Shit! Will you cut that out?" 

"I should'a got more to eat when we were stopped," Vinnie said, slouching down in his seat. "I'm still hungry."

"Too bad. We're not stopping again 'til we've got some more miles between us and your stepfather. I'm not a hundred percent sure he's not gonna want to pop me for this." It was true, but Sonny wasn't worried—he was euphoric. He hadn't been this excited in years.

"Yeah?" Vinnie asked. "For what?"

Sonny didn't answer. It was impossible for him to tell whether Vinnie was putting him on or if he was still in off in the Twilight Zone. He wasn't worried about that either, though. He could be very patient when he had to, and he could wait as long as it took to get Vinnie out of that morass in his head. He already had his first step in the extrication process mapped out. They'd drive until evening, then check into a hotel. A few days without the drugs would tell him whether Vinnie's head was screwed on straight, and if it wasn't, Sonny was sure he'd have no trouble getting it turned around.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this series forever. I think there are about sixty finished stories at this point.


End file.
